Burl Ives was a 20th-century minstrel and balladeer who brought new life and popularity to some of America's oldest folk music with songs of children, history, animals, insects and loves won and lost.

"It's amazing to watch and hear Burl Ives sing folk songs," Washington Post music critic Paul Hume once wrote. "He just stands there with his guitar and sings. Usually he keeps a deadpan, and the songs are almost always a succession of verses telling a story . . . just the same way they have been played and sung for hundreds of years. They require no arranging or new version . . . easy style, no preaching and plenty of fun."

Mr. Ives also was a noted stage and screen actor who won an Academy Award in 1959 for his role in "The Big Country," one of several movies about the great outdoors in which he appeared. - from Washington Post obit