Who was Ed Ames?
Ed Ames, who first gained fame as the lead singer of the Ames Brothers, a chart-topping group whose success preceded the rise of rock ‘n’ roll, and who later went on to perform as the Indian sideman for Fess Parker on the popular NBC show “Daniel Boone,” died Sunday at her home in Beverly Hills, California. She was 95 years old.
His wife, Jeanne (Arnold) Ames, said the cause was Alzheimer’s disease.
Mr. Ames’ introduction to the limelight was a family affair. With their smooth, clean harmonies, the Ames brothers (Ed, Gene, Joe, and Vic) had struck records from the late 1940s to the late 1950s with material ranging from pre-World War I college songs ( “The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi”) to folk songs (“Good night Irene”) to love songs (“I love you for sentimental reasons”). The foursome had a two-sided No. 1 hit in 1950 with “Sentimental Me” and “Rag Mop.” His “You, You, You” held the number one spot for eight weeks in 1953 and stayed on the charts for nearly eight months. In total, the Ames Brothers sold more than 20 million records.
The Ames brothers performed at major venues, including Ciro’s in Hollywood and the Roxy in New York. They appeared regularly in Las Vegas and on television, guesting on Milton Berle, Perry Como, Jackie Gleason, and Ed Sullivan. By 1956, they had their own syndicated television series. In 1958, Billboard magazine named them Vocal Group of the Year.
But by 1960, Ed Ames had had enough.
“I thought I’d go crazy if I had to sing the same song over again,” he said in Bored 1964. “His brothers continued on the nightclub circuit without him.
After taking acting lessons, Mr. Ames was cast in an Off-Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” for $50 a week. He made his Broadway debut as Jerry Orbach’s replacement in the 1961 musical “Carnival!”
He also continued recording. As a solo artist, he had hits with “Try to Remember” (1965), “Time, Time” (1967), “My Cup Runneth Over” (1967) and “Who Will Answer?” (1968).
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Mr. Ames also starred in the 1963 Broadway production of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Dale Wasserman’s adaptation of the Ken Kesey novel. He played Chief Bromden, an American Indian patient in a mental hospital who pretends to be mute and ends up suffocating the main character, the rebellious Randle Patrick McMurphy, played by Kirk Douglas (and later, in the film, by Jack Nicholson), as a act. of mercy
It wouldn’t be the last time Mr. Ames would play a Native American.
His performance in “Cuckoo’s Nest” led to his best-known role: opposite Fess Parker in “Daniel Boone” as Mingo, the Oxford-educated son of a Cherokee woman and an English nobleman who joins Boone on his expeditions into the Tennessee border. (Mingo’s father was the Earl of Dunmore, but Mingo chose to remain part of the Cherokee Nation rather than claim the title.)
Is this octopus having a nightmare?
Finally (almost) summer! Here’s what to do in New York in June. Mr. Ames played Mingo for the first four of the show’s six seasons, from 1964 to 1968. But his most memorable moment during those years wasn’t on “Daniel Boone.” It happened on April 29, 1965, when he was a guest of Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show.”
In a segment that soon became a staple of “Tonight Show” highlight reels, Mr. Ames set out to teach Mr. Carson how to throw a tomahawk, using a crude drawing of a sheriff on a wood panel. as target. He tossed the tomahawk across the stage. When he rammed himself right into the sheriff’s crotch, the audience reacted with a loud, sustained laugh.
Mr. Ames tried to retrieve the tomahawk, but Mr. Carson grabbed his arm. As another laugh died down, Mr. Carson looked at Mr. Ames and said, “I didn’t even know you were Jewish.”
He was.
Ed Ames was born Edmund Dantes Urick in Malden, Massachusetts, on July 9, 1927, the youngest of nine surviving children born to David and Sarah (Zaslavskaya) Urick, Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine. In their teens, Ed and his three brothers formed a singing group and won amateur contests in the Boston area.
Originally billed as the Urick Brothers, then the Amory Brothers, they became the Ames Brothers when signed to Coral Records. They started having hits after moving to RCA Records in 1953.
Ed was the last surviving member of the Ames Brothers; Vic died in a car accident in 1978, Gene in 1997 and Joe in 2007. His first marriage, to Sara Cacheiro, ended in divorce. In addition to his wife, whom he married in 1998, he is survived by two children from his first marriage, Ronald and Sonya; a stepson, Stephen Saviano; seven grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren. His daughter Marcella Ames predeceased him.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Mr. Ames performed in regional productions of musicals such as “South Pacific,” “Man of La Mancha,” and “Carousel.” He was also seen occasionally on television, in “Murder, She Wrote”, “In the Heat of the Night” and, as himself, in the sitcom “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show”.
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