Ed Ames, pop singer and TV star, dies at 95

Ed Ames, the youngest member of the preferred Nineteen Fifties making a song crew the Ames Brothers, who later changed into a a success actor in tv and musical theater, has died. He was once 95.

The closing survivor of the 4 making a song brothers, Ames died on May 21 from Alzheimer’s illness, his spouse Jeanne Ames mentioned on Saturday.

“He had a wonderful life,” she mentioned.

On tv, Ames was once most probably very best identified for his position as Mingo, the Oxford-educated Native American within the Sixties journey collection “Daniel Boone” that starred Fess Parker because the well-known frontiersman. He additionally was once the middle of a little bit on “The Tonight Show” that — because of his painfully uncanny purpose with a hatchet — changed into one of the vital display’s maximum memorable marvel moments.

Ames had visitor roles in TV collection similar to “Murder, She Wrote” and “In the Heat of the Night,” and toured often in musicals, acting such widespread songs as “Try to Remember” and the music that changed into his greatest hit unmarried, “My Cup Runneth Over.”

As a part of the Nineteen Fifties song scene, he and his brothers had been one in all a lot of pop quartets that incorporated the Four Aces, Four Lads, Gaylords, Hilltoppers, Lancers, Four Knights, Ink Spots and, nonetheless round from a prior technology, the Mills Brothers. But the Ames Brothers — Ed, Joe, Gene and Vic — had a novel tone: they had been basses and baritones, now not tenors.

Their recordings of “Rag Mop,” “Sentimental Me” and “Undecided” changed into giant hits, and they introduced a hectic profession showing on TV selection displays, recording 40 albums and enjoying in night time golf equipment and auditoriums around the nation.

By the tip of the Nineteen Fifties, rock ‘n’ roll had overtaken the pop charts and making a song quartets had been at the decline. The Ameses, in the meantime, had bored with the consistent trip and absence from their rising households. The finale for Ed got here when he arrived house abruptly and his spouse known as to their 3-year-old daughter: “Who is it?” The lady responded, “One of the Ames Brothers.”

“That did it,” he instructed a reporter. “My brothers and I agreed that we had all had it and should go our separate ways.” The crew, which was once incomes $20,000 per week, performed its closing engagement at the Sahara in Las (*95*) on New Year’s 1961.

Ed’s efforts to ascertain himself as a solo singer weren’t instantly a success and he became to appearing. He virtually misplaced his space prior to he discovered a task in a manufacturing of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.”

In the long-running musical “The Fantasticks” he sang “Try to Remember,” which changed into one in all his theme songs. He joined the touring corporate of Gower Champion’s “Carnival” and transferred to the New York corporate till the display’s ultimate efficiency.

In a task that presaged his long run position on “Daniel Boone,” he then received consideration because the stoic Native American within the 1963 Broadway play “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” with Kirk Douglas and Gene Wilder within the adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel.

Ames earned most sensible cash at Las (*95*) casinos and in lodge supper golf equipment and toured broadly within the musicals “Man of La Mancha,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “South Pacific” and “I Do, I Do.”

“I Do, I Do” equipped his greatest hit unmarried, “My Cup Runneth Over,” a gold document winner in 1967. He had some other hit in 1968 with “Who Will Answer?”

It was once all over his run on “Daniel Boone” that he contributed to what was once known as the longest sustained burst of laughter within the historical past of “The Tonight Show.”

For a 1965 episode he was once persuaded to reveal the hatchet-throwing talents he realized as Mingo. The silhouette of a cowboy was once painted on a work of wooden, and Ames threw a hatchet at the objective. It landed on squarely at the cowboy’s crotch.

Ames was once born Edmund Dantes Urick in Malden, Massachusetts, the youngest of eleven youngsters, 4 who died in youth. Their oldsters had been Ukrainian immigrants and their mom taught the youngsters to learn Shakespeare and to understand song they heard each Saturday at the Metropolitan Opera declares.

The 4 youngest boys started making a song at native occasions because the Urick Brothers. Ed was once nonetheless in highschool once they moved to nighttime golf equipment, however as a husky six-footer with a deep voice, he was once in a position to move for 21.

In New York, comedy author Abe Burrows instructed a reputation alternate as a result of Urick was once onerous to bear in mind. Ames was once the brothers’ selection.

After the 4 brothers break up up, the opposite brothers additionally persisted acting and recording, however won much less realize than Ed. Vic died in 1978, Gene in 1997 and Joe in December 2007.

Ames married Sonja Saslaveski in 1948, and they’d 3 youngsters: Sonja, Ronald and Linda. The couple divorced in 1978, and in 1998 he married Jeanne Arnold.

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The overdue Associated Press author Bob Thomas was once a contributor to this file from Los Angeles.