Here’s a classic song of the day that sounded different from anything else on the charts at the time, “A Little Bitty Tear” by Burl Ives. Released as a single in November of 1961, it rose all the way to #9 on the Billboard Hot 100, #2 on Billboard’s Country Singles chart, and #1 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart.
“A Little Bitty Tear” was written by country songwriter Hank Cochran. It was first recorded by Ray Sanders, with the Anita Kerr Singers, in 1960, but it was Burl Ives’ recording that caught the public’s fancy. Ives’ single ended up being nominated for two Grammy Awards, Best Country & Western Recording and Best Male Solo Vocal Performance. (It lost both, the first to Jimmy Dean’s “Big Bad John” and the second to Jack Jones’ “Lollipops and Roses.”)
Burl Ives might not be a household name today, but he was back in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. In addition to his fame as a folksinger (with songs like “Funny Way of Laughin’,” “Blue Tail Fly,” “Lavender’s Blue (Dilly Dilly),” “On Top of Old Smokey,” “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” and “Riders in the Sky,”), he was also a noted actor (in films like East of Eden, Desire Under the Elms, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Big Country, Ensign Pulver, and my personal favorite, the underrated Day of the Outlaw), and an animated snowman (in the Christmas television special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, where his character Sam the Snowman sang the classic song, “Holly Jolly Christmas.” Born in 1909, he began his career as an itinerant folksinger, got his own radio show (The Wayfaring Stranger) in 1940, and started appearing in films shortly after. His first single to get widespread attention was 1945’s “Foggy, Foggy Dew” and dozens more followed, with “A Little Bitty Tear” being his biggest.
A longtime pipe and cigar smoker, contracted oral cancer and passed away in 1995. He was 85 years old.
