Tennessee Ernie Ford › Similar Artists

Tex Ritter - 100% match to Tennessee Ernie Ford

Maurice Woodward Ritter, 12 January 1905, near Murvaul, Panola County, Texas, USA, d. 2 January 1974, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. The youngest of six children, he grew up on the farm that the Ritter family had worked for over 70 years. He attended High School in Beaumont and then entered the University of Texas in Austin. Here he began his studies for a law degree in Governme Read more

Faron Young - 96% match to Tennessee Ernie Ford

25 February 1932, Shreveport, Louisiana, USA, d. 10 December 1996, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Young was raised on the farm his father bought just outside Shreveport and learned to play the guitar and sing country songs as a boy. Greatly influenced by Hank Williams (in his early days he was something of a soundalike) and while still at school, he formed a country band and beg Read more

Jimmy Dean - 95% match to Tennessee Ernie Ford

Seth Ward, 10 August 1928, near Plainview, Texas, USA. Dean’s mother, who was the family’s only provider, ran a barbershop and as a boy, he picked cotton and worked on local farms. His mother taught him to play the piano when he was 10 years old and he taught himself guitar, accordion and harmonica as soon as he had access to the instruments. At 16, he began to stu Read more

Frankie Laine - 86% match to Tennessee Ernie Ford

Francesco Paolo LoVecchio, 30 March 1913, Chicago, Illinois, USA, d. 6 February 2007, San Diego, California, USA. Laine had been a chorister at the Immaculate Conception Church in his city’s Sicilian quarter before entering showbusiness proper on leaving school. For nearly a decade he travelled as a singing waiter, dancing instructor (with a victory in a 1932 dance mara Read more

Merle Travis - 85% match to Tennessee Ernie Ford

Merle Robert Travis, 29 November 1917, Rosewood, Kentucky, USA, d. 20 October 1983, Tahlequah, Oklahoma, USA. Travis was the son of a tobacco farmer but by the time he was four years old, the family had moved to Ebenezer, Kentucky, and his father was working down the mines. Travis’ father often remarked, ‘Another day older and deeper in debt’, a phrase his son Read more

Red Foley - 81% match to Tennessee Ernie Ford

Clyde Julian Foley, 17 June 1910, in a log cabin between Blue Lick and Berea, Kentucky, USA, d. 19 September 1968, Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA. The son of a fiddle player, Foley learned guitar as a child and was encouraged to sing by his parents. After high school, he attended Georgetown College, Kentucky, where he was discovered by a scout for the noted WLS National Barn Dance Read more

Hank Penny - 75% match to Tennessee Ernie Ford

Johnny Horton - 71% match to Tennessee Ernie Ford

30 April 1925, Los Angeles, California, USA, d. 5 November 1960, Milano, Texas, USA. Horton was raised in Tyler, Texas, where his sharecropping family settled in search of work. He learned the guitar from his mother and, owing to his athletic prowess, won scholarships at Baylor University and later the University of Seattle. For a time he worked in the fishing industry but b Read more

Eddy Arnold - 66% match to Tennessee Ernie Ford

Richard Edward Arnold, 15 May 1918, on a farm near Madisonville, Chester County, Tennessee, USA, d. 8 May 2008, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Arnold’s father and mother played fiddle and guitar, respectively, and he learned guitar as a child. His father died on Eddy’s 11th birthday and he left school to work on the farm. By the end of the year the bank foreclosed, and Read more

Hank Thompson - 65% match to Tennessee Ernie Ford

Henry William Thompson, 3 September 1925, Waco, Texas, USA, d. 6 November 2007, Keller, Fort Worth, Texas, USA. Thompson, as a young boy, was fond of records by Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family. He first learned the harmonica and then his parents gave him a guitar for his tenth birthday. He also played Hawaiian guitar, learned conjuring tricks and had a ventriloquist
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Hank Snow - 61% match to Tennessee Ernie Ford

Clarence Eugene Snow, 9 May 1914, Brooklyn, near Liverpool, Nova Scotia, Canada, d. 20 December 1999, Madison, Tennessee, USA. After his parents divorced when he was eight years old, Snow spent four unhappy years with his grandmother, finally running away to rejoin his mother when she remarried. However, he was cruelly mistreated by his stepfather, which prompted him to absc Read more

Webb Pierce - 61% match to Tennessee Ernie Ford

8 August 1921, near West Monroe, Louisiana, USA, d. 24 February 1991, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. His father died when Pierce was only three months old, his mother remarried and he was raised on a farm seven miles from Monroe. Although no one in the family performed music, his mother had a collection of country records which, together with Gene Autry films, were his first cou Read more

Kay Starr - 60% match to Tennessee Ernie Ford

Katherine LaVerne Starks, 21 July 1922, Dougherty, Oklahoma, USA. While she was still a child, Starr’s family moved to Dallas, Texas, where she made her professional debut on local radio before she had left school. In 1939 she was hired briefly by Glenn Miller when his regular singer, Marion Hutton, was sick. Starr made records with Miller, but was soon on the move. She Read more

Guy Mitchell - 58% match to Tennessee Ernie Ford

Albert Cernick, 22 February 1927, Detroit, Michigan, USA, d. 1 July 1999, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. Mitchell was an enormously popular singer in the USA and especially the UK, particularly during the 50s, with a straightforward style, rich voice and affable personality. Although his birthplace is often given as Yugoslavia, his parents’ homeland, Mitchell confirmed in a 19 Read more

Carl Smith - 56% match to Tennessee Ernie Ford