Mary Ford (July 7, 1924[1]–September 30, 1977), born Iris Colleen Summers, was an American vocalist and guitarist, comprising half of the husband-and-wife musical team Les Paul and Mary Ford. Between 1950 and 1954, the couple had 16 top-ten hits. In 1951 alone they sold six million records.
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Born Iris Summers in El Monte, California, Ford came from a musical family. Her father was a Nazarene minister. Her parents left Missouri, traveling cross-country while singing gospel music and preaching at revival meetings across America. They eventually settled in Southern California, where they were heard over Pasadena's first Christian radio station. Her sisters and brothers were all musicians; Esther, Carol, Eva, Fletcher, jazz organist Bruce and film composer Bob Summers.
In the early 1940s Ford found work as a country music performer with Gene Autry and Jimmy Wakely. She appeared with Wakely in the PRC film I'm from Arkansas (1944) as a member of the Sunshine Girls trio. In 1945, Autry introduced her to guitarist Les Paul, and the two teamed in 1946. For billing purposes, Paul selected "Mary Ford" from a telephone directory so her name would be almost as short as his. With Paul she became one of the early practitioners of multi-tracking. Patti Page and Jane Turzy were other 1950s vocalists who used multi-tracking.
After their marriage on December 29, 1949, the couple appeared together on their NBC radio program, The Les Paul Show (1949–50), and they had a series of hit records for Capitol Records in the early 1950s, including "Tiger Rag", "Vaya con Dios" (11 weeks at #1), "How High the Moon" (nine weeks at #1), "Bye Bye Blues" and "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise". These songs featured Mary harmonizing with herself, giving the vocals a very novel sound. Paul and Ford also used the now-ubiquitous recording technique known as close miking, where the microphone is less than six inches from the singer's mouth. This produces a more intimate, less reverberant sound than when the singer is a foot or more from the microphone. It also emphasizes low-frequency sounds in the voice. The result was a singing style that diverged strongly from earlier styles, such as vocals in musical comedies of the 1930s and 1940s.
In 1952, their innovative sound was satirized by Stan Freberg in his recording of "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise" (Capitol, F 2279).
In 1953, the couple began their television series, The Les Paul and Mary Ford at Home Show. In 1955, they gave a concert at Carnegie Hall, and the following year they performed for President Dwight Eisenhower at the White House. In 1961, they appeared on NBC's Five Star Jubilee.
They faded from the charts in the late 1950s, and in 1962, Ford and Paul had a bitter divorce, ending their professional association. Living in Monrovia, California, she married an old friend from high school, Donald Hatfield, and she occasionally performed with her sisters and brother. Bassist Red Wootten, who married Mary's sister Eva Summers, wrote his memories of playing at the Crescendo in Los Angeles with Mary, her sister Carol and her brother, Bob Summers:
In Downey, California, Mary's sister Esther Williams played the organ in The Village Restaurant. Esther's daughter, Esther Colleen "Suzee" Williams, recalled one amusing incident at the restaurant in the years after Mary Ford and Les Paul had split up:
Mary Ford died of complications from diabetes in Arcadia, California at the age of 53. She is buried at Forest Lawn-Covina Hills in Covina, California. Although her year of birth has been variously reported (1924, 1925, 1928), the year 1924 is engraved on her tombstone.[1]
Along with interviews, performance footage of the couple is featured in the musical documentary Chasing Sound: Les Paul at 90, directed by John Paulson (Johnny Mathis Live, An Evening with Chita Rivera). Distributed by Koch Entertainment, Chasing Sound premiered May 9, 2007 at the Downer Theater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, followed by the television premiere July 11, 2007 on PBS as part of its American Masters series.[4][5]