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Revealed Could 27, 2023 • 4 minute learn
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Ed Ames, the youngest member of the favored Fifties singing group the Ames Brothers, who later turned a profitable actor in tv and musical theatre, has died. He was 95.
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The final survivor of the 4 singing brothers, Ames died on Could 21 from Alzheimer’s illness, his spouse Jeanne Ames stated on Saturday.
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“He had a beautiful life,” she stated.
On tv, Ames was seemingly finest identified for his position as Mingo, the Oxford-educated Native American within the Nineteen Sixties journey collection “Daniel Boone” that starred Fess Parker because the well-known frontiersman. He additionally was the centre of a bit on “The Tonight Present” that — because of his painfully uncanny purpose with a hatchet — turned one of many present’s most memorable shock moments.
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Ames had visitor roles in TV collection similar to “Homicide, She Wrote” and “Within the Warmth of the Evening,” and toured often in musicals, performing such well-liked songs as “Attempt to Keep in mind” and the music that turned his greatest hit single, “My Cup Runneth Over.”
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As a part of the Fifties music scene, he and his brothers have been one in every of quite a few pop quartets that included the 4 Aces, 4 Lads, Gaylords, Hilltoppers, Lancers, 4 Knights, Ink Spots and, nonetheless round from a earlier period, the Mills Brothers. However the Ames Brothers — Ed, Joe, Gene and Vic — had a singular tone: they have been basses and baritones, not tenors.
Their recordings of “Rag Mop,” “Sentimental Me” and “Undecided” turned huge hits, they usually launched a busy profession showing on TV selection reveals, recording 40 albums and enjoying in evening golf equipment and auditoriums throughout the nation.
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By the top of the Fifties, rock ‘n’ roll had overtaken the pop charts and singing quartets have been on the decline. The Ameses, in the meantime, had uninterested in the fixed journey and absence from their rising households. The finale for Ed got here when he arrived residence unexpectedly and his spouse known as to their 3-year-old daughter: “Who’s it?” The woman replied, “One of many Ames Brothers.”
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“That did it,” he advised a reporter. “My brothers and I agreed that we had all had it and may go our separate methods.” The group, which was incomes $20,000 per week, performed its final engagement on the Sahara in Las Vegas on New 12 months’s 1961.
Ed’s efforts to ascertain himself as a solo singer weren’t instantly profitable and he turned to appearing. He virtually misplaced his home earlier than he discovered a task in a manufacturing of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.”
Within the long-running musical “The Fantasticks” he sang “Attempt to Keep in mind,” which turned one in every of his theme songs. He joined the touring firm of Gower Champion’s “Carnival” and transferred to the New York firm till the present’s remaining efficiency.
In a task that presaged his future position on “Daniel Boone,” he then gained 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.
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Ames earned high cash at Las Vegas casinos and in resort supper golf equipment and toured extensively within the musicals “Man of La Mancha,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “South Pacific” and “I Do, I Do.”
“I Do, I Do” supplied his greatest hit single, “My Cup Runneth Over,” a gold document winner in 1967. He had one other hit in 1968 with “Who Will Reply?”
It was throughout his run on “Daniel Boone” that he contributed to what was known as the longest sustained burst of laughter within the historical past of “The Tonight Present.”
For a 1965 episode he was persuaded to reveal the hatchet-throwing expertise he discovered as Mingo. The silhouette of a cowboy was painted on a bit of wooden, and Ames threw a hatchet on the goal. It landed on squarely on the cowboy’s crotch.
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Ames was born Edmund Dantes Urick in Malden, Massachusetts, the youngest of 11 youngsters, 4 who died in childhood. Their mother and father have been Ukrainian immigrants and their mom taught the youngsters to learn Shakespeare and to understand music they heard each Saturday on the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts.
The 4 youngest boys started singing at native occasions because the Urick Brothers. Ed was nonetheless in highschool once they moved to nighttime golf equipment, however as a husky six-footer with a deep voice, he was capable of go for 21.
In New York, comedy author Abe Burrows suggested a reputation change as a result of Urick was arduous to recollect. Ames was the brothers’ alternative.
After the 4 brothers break up up, the opposite brothers additionally continued performing and recording, however gained much less discover than Ed. Vic died in 1978, Gene in 1997 and Joe in December 2007.
Ames married Sonja Saslaveski in 1948, they usually had three youngsters: Sonja, Ronald and Linda. The couple divorced in 1978, and in 1998 he married Jeanne Arnold.
— The late Related Press author Bob Thomas was a contributor to this report from Los Angeles.
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