#24: Mary Ann Regrets by Burl Ives
City: Kingston, ON
Radio Station: CKWS
Peak Month: January 1963
Peak Position in Kingston ~ #6
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #38
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #39
YouTube: “Mary Ann Regrets”
Lyrics: “Mary Ann Regrets”
Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives was born in 1909 in Hunt City, Illinois. As a youngster, one day Ives was singing in the garden with his mother, and his uncle overheard them. He invited his nephew to sing at the old soldiers’ reunion in Hunt City. The boy performed a rendition of the folk ballad “Barbara Allen” and impressed both his uncle and the audience. He went to college from 1927 to 1929, but decided he was wasting his time. In 1930, he began traveling across the USA as an itinerant singer during the early 1930s, earning his way by doing odd jobs and playing his banjo. He was jailed in Mona, Utah, for vagrancy and for singing “Foggy Dew” (an English folk song), which the authorities decided was a bawdy song. Around 1931, he began performing on WBOW radio in Terre Haute, Indiana.