Burl Ives was one of six children born to a Scottish-Irish farming family in Jasper County, Illinois. He first sang in public for a soldiers' reunion when he was 4. In high school he learned the banjo and played fullback, intending to become a football coach when he enrolled at Eastern Illinois State Teacher's College in 1927. He dropped out in 1930 and wandered, hitching rides, doing odd jobs, street singing.

Summer stock in the late '30s led to a job with CBS radio in 1940; through his "Wayfaring Stranger" he popularized many of the folksongs he had collected in his travels. By the 1960s he had hits on both popular and country charts. He recorded over 30 albums for Decca and another dozen for Columbia. In 1964 he was singer-narrator of Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, an often-repeated Christmas television special. His Broadway debut was in 1938, though he is best remembered for creating the role of Big Daddy in the 1950s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

His four-decade, 30+ movie career began as a singing cowboy in Smoky and reached its peak with (again) the Big Daddy role in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and an Oscar for supporting actor in The Big Country, both in 1958. He officially retired to Anacortes, Washington, at age eighty though he continued to do frequent benefit performances.
Frequent benefits for Indian reservations, peace academies, Boy Scouts, environmental groups, arts foundations, children's medicine Interred at Mound Cemetery, Jasper County, Illinois, USA. Burl Ives was the voice of Sam the Eagle, the narrator of the classic Disneyland attraction "American Sings" (1974-1988) in Tomorrowland. Was inducted into the DeMolay Hall of Fame on June 24th, 1994. Received the DeMolay Legion of Honor in 1986. Was initiated into DeMolay at the George N. Todd Chapter in Charleston Illinois, in 1927. He was a 33rd Degree Mason. Was a licensed amateur (ham) radio with the call sign KA6HVA. When he passed away, he became, in ham radio parlance, a "silent key." The Ren and Stimpy Show's first season episode "Stimpy's Invention" featured a record, "Happy Happy Joy Joy," which contained a variety of spoken-word segments meant to parody some of Ives' albums from the 1960s. When Ives saw the episode, he contacted Ren and Stimpy Show creator John K. and said that he would have been willing to do the voice over work for it.