Мэри Форд: Американская гитаристка и вокалистка.

American vocalist and guitarist

Mary Ford (born Iris Colleen Summers; July 7, 1924 – September 30, 1977) was an American guitarist and vocalist, 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, including "How High the Moon" and "Vaya con Dios", which were number one hits on the Billboard charts. In 1951 alone they sold six million records. With Paul, Ford became one of the early practitioners of multi tracking.

Born Iris Colleen Summers, Mary Ford was born in El Monte, California, the second daughter of Marshall McKinley Summers (born February 13, 1896, in Ridgway, Illinois; died August 5, 1981, in Los Angeles), a Nazarene minister, who later became a painting contractor, and his wife, Dorothy May White Summers. Mary Ford was the sister of Byron Fletcher Summers, Esther E. Williams, Carol Jean Corona, Bruce Summers, Eva Wootten, and Bob Summers. Ford came from a musical family. Her parents left Missouri, travelling cross country while singing gospel music and preaching at revival meetings across the United States. They eventually settled in southern California, where they were heard over KPPC AM, Pasadena's first Christian radio station. Her sisters and brothers were all musicians. While still a junior high school student, Colleen Summers and Mildred L. "Milly" Watson (later Millie Pace) (born February 26, 1922, in Los Angeles; died August 2, 1976, in Orange County, California), a local girl, performed together in churches in Pasadena, California, and later made gospel recordings with Milly's older brother, Marvin, for which she wrote some songs. In 1939 Summers and Milly won a Pasadena talent contest judged by "several Hollywood notables, including a very young Judy Garland". Hoping to have a musical career, Summers and Milly Watson lost interest in school, played truant frequently and eventually quit school, only to find employment as an usher in a movie theatre. the sister of western swing guitarist vocalist Jimmie Widener, formed the Sunshine Girls, a western trio who sang backup to Jimmy Wakely and his trio. and hosted by Foy Willing and emceed by Cliffie Stone. In 1944, the Sunshine Girls trio appeared with Wakely in the PRC film I'm from Arkansas, in which they sang "You Are My Sunshine" and "Whistlin' (Walkin') Down the Lane With You" with Wakely. In 1945, when Eddie Dean introduced her to guitarist Les Paul, she was a popular western vocalist on KXLA's Dinner Bell Round Up Time. The two began performing together in 1946. After Summers left the Sunshine Girls to work with Paul and his trio, she was replaced initially by Marilyn Myers Tuttle. After Tuttle left, Summers' older sister, Eva, sang with Earles and Widener as the Three Rays on the Jimmy Wakely Show on CBS. By 1947, Summers became romantically involved with Les Paul, whose first marriage to Virginia M. Webb was failing, as it could no longer endure the stresses and strains of his show business career. In January 1948, while traveling on Route 66 through Oklahoma, the couple's car driven by Summers skidded off the road and plummeted 20 feet into a frozen creek bed. After the accident, Summers identified herself to authorities as Iris Watson. Among Paul's many injuries, his right elbow was shattered, and it would be eighteen months before he could play guitar again. By the summer of 1949, Summers was performing under the stage name of Mary Ford. To avoid confusing her established western music audience, but later selected the stage name "Mary Ford" from a telephone directory so her name would be almost as short as his. That same year, Les Paul divorced his wife and wed Mary Ford on December 29 in a "small private ceremony without much fanfare" in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The couple had three children: a baby born on November 26, 1954, who died four days later; Mary Colleen Paul, whom they fostered from 1958; and Robert Ralph "Bobby" Paul (born in 1959).

Shortly after their wedding, Paul and Ford began making radio programs together for NBC, including Les Paul and Mary Ford at Home, a fifteen minute program that was pre recorded and broadcast every Friday night. In July 1958, Paul and Ford left Capitol and signed with the Columbia label, but the move failed to restore their declining career, and Ford began increasingly suffering from alcoholism. In 1961, they appeared on NBC's Five Star Jubilee. Les and Mary divorced in December 1964.

In November 1963, Ford released her first solo single, an English language version of "Dominique", for Calendar Records. In about 1965, Ford married Donald Hatfield, whom she had known since high school, and they settled in Monrovia, California. Foy Willing and his wife attended the wedding reception. Ford and her sisters were used as vocalists on Foy Willing's album The New Sound of American Folk, which was recorded at their brother Bobby Summers' Sound House Recorders in El Monte, California, and released on the Jubilee label. In Downey, California, Mary's sister Esther Williams played the organ in The Village Restaurant. Esther's daughter, Esther Colleen "Suzee" Williams, recalled one amusing incident at the restaurant in the years after Mary Ford and Les Paul had split up:
There was one singer that came in to sing with my mom. His name was Lou Monica. Well, Mary asked him to learn the song "Donkey Serenade." It's not an easy song to sing. However, Mr. Monica agreed, and after a couple of weeks he said he was ready. As he began to sing, the doors of the club opened wide, and in came Mary, dressed in black with a black gaucho hat, on top of a donkey! Mr. Monica never skipped a beat.

Ford and Paul were awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Recording at 1541 Vine Street in Hollywood. In 1978, they were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Ford succumbed to complications of alcohol abuse in 1977. After eight weeks in a diabetic coma, she died in Arcadia, California, at the age of 53. She is buried at Forest Lawn Covina Hills in Covina, California. Although her year of birth has been variously reported as either 1924, 1925, or 1928, the year 1924 is engraved on her tombstone, along with "Vaya con Dios" ("Go with God"), the name of one of her most popular songs.

Interviews and performance footage of the couple are featured in the musical documentary Chasing Sound: Les Paul at 90, directed by John Paulson (Johnny Mathis Live, An Evening with Chita Rivera). Distributed by Koch Entertainment, the film premiered May 9, 2007 at the Downer Theater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, followed by its television premiere, July 11, 2007, on PBS as part of its American Masters series.