Mary Ford

Trivia

• Mary Ford and Les Paul were awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Recording at 1541 Vine Street in Hollywood, California.
• Mary Ford was an American vocalist and guitarist, comprising half of the husband-and-wife musical team Les Paul and Mary Ford.
• Between 1950 and 1954, the couple had 16 top-ten hits. In 1951 alone they sold six million records.
• In the early 1940s Ford found work as a country music performer with Gene Autry and Jimmy Wakely.
• She appeared with Wakely in the PRC film I'm from Arkansas (1944) as a member of the Sunshine Girls trio. In 1945, Autry introduced her to guitarist Les Paul, and the two teamed in 1946.
• For billing purposes, Paul selected "Mary Ford" from a telephone directory so her name would be almost as short as his. With Paul she became one of the early practitioners of multi-tracking. Patti Page and Jane Turzy were other 1950s vocalists who used multi-tracking.
• After their marriage on December 29, 1949, the couple appeared together on their NBC radio program, The Les Paul Show (1949-50), and they had a series of hit records for Capitol Records in the early 1950s, including "Tiger Rag", "Vaya con Dios" (11 weeks at #1), "How High the Moon" (nine weeks at #1), "Bye Bye Blues" and "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise".
• In 1953 the couple began their television series, The Les Paul and Mary Ford at Home Show.
• In 1955 they gave a concert at Carnegie Hall, and the following year they performed for President Dwight Eisenhower at the White House.

Quotes

• "When Kiss first started out, when I got my first check from the record company, I went to a music store in New York and picked up my first Les Paul — a sunburst ... It’s been a love affair ever since."