Not only did I miss the obituary and Tee's posting or it, I had no idea Ed Ames was still alive.
I thought maybe this posting from 2003, not 2023.
He was the great balladeer of show tunes in the mid-1960s. Not just My Cup Runneth Over, but everything from Try to Remember to The Impossible Dream were sung with great feeling and power on his albums. He began to fade in the late 1960s and recorded his last album in 1970. He was big in summer stock productions of Shenandoah, Fiddler on the Roof, South Pacific, Camelot, and Man of La Mancha in the 1980s. Then he just sort of disappeared from the public consciousness.
Singing keeps you young. I have no doubt his rich baritone lasted to his end at 95.
R.I.P. Ed Ames
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R.I.P. Ed Ames
This is one for baby boomers and even-older's.
Ames was part of the pre-rock-and-roll Ames Brothers, who were enormously successful in their time.
Ed left the group in the 60s, and became an actor -- playing Chief Bromden in the Kirk Douglas Broadway version of Cuckoo''s Nest, and, most prominently, Mingo, Daniel Boone's close Native American friend on the Fess Parker Daniel Boone TV series.
During that time, he had a couple of hit records -- a single of My Cup Runneth Over, from the Broadway musical I Do! I Do!, and a half-spoken-word serious-message thing called Who Will Answer,? which, I swear, I had utterly forgotten until being reminded of it in the obituary below.
One thing I couldn't have forgotten -- the Times highlights this, as well; possibly the most memorable moment of Ames' career: He was on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, demonstrating the tomahawk he wielded on Daniel Boone. He threw it at a shadow outline of a man, and it landed smack dab in the crotch. I thought Carson would die laughing; he ran the clip on every anniversary show he ever had.
Ames lived long enough to be essentially forgotten -- even here, till now. But he touched down on my life, enough times to deserve acknowledgement.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/26/arts ... -dead.html
Ames was part of the pre-rock-and-roll Ames Brothers, who were enormously successful in their time.
Ed left the group in the 60s, and became an actor -- playing Chief Bromden in the Kirk Douglas Broadway version of Cuckoo''s Nest, and, most prominently, Mingo, Daniel Boone's close Native American friend on the Fess Parker Daniel Boone TV series.
During that time, he had a couple of hit records -- a single of My Cup Runneth Over, from the Broadway musical I Do! I Do!, and a half-spoken-word serious-message thing called Who Will Answer,? which, I swear, I had utterly forgotten until being reminded of it in the obituary below.
One thing I couldn't have forgotten -- the Times highlights this, as well; possibly the most memorable moment of Ames' career: He was on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, demonstrating the tomahawk he wielded on Daniel Boone. He threw it at a shadow outline of a man, and it landed smack dab in the crotch. I thought Carson would die laughing; he ran the clip on every anniversary show he ever had.
Ames lived long enough to be essentially forgotten -- even here, till now. But he touched down on my life, enough times to deserve acknowledgement.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/26/arts ... -dead.html