Mary Ford (born Iris Colleen Summers; July 7, 1924 – September 30, 1977) was an American vocalist and guitarist, comprising half of the 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.
By 1943, Colleen Summers, with Vivian Earles and June Widener formed the Sunshine Girls, a western trio who sang backup to Jimmy Wakely and his trio. They were regulars on The Hollywood Barn Dance, a successful weekly CBS Radio program broadcast on Saturday nights, 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, where 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, Summer's older sister, Eva, sang with Earler and Widener as the Three Rays on the Jimmy Wakely Show on CBS. Colleen Summers appeared on Gene Autry's Melody Ranch CBS radio program as a cast member and featured vocalist from July through early November 1946.
By the summer of 1949, Summers was performing under the stage name of Mary Ford. Ford and Paul were music superstars during the first half of the 1950s, putting out 28 hits for Capitol Records between 1950 and 1957, including "Tiger Rag", "Vaya con Dios" (11 weeks at #1), "Mockin' Bird Hill" (top 10), "How High the Moon" (nine weeks at #1), "Bye Bye Blues" and "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise". These songs featured Ford harmonizing with herself, giving the vocals a novel sound. Paul and Ford did all their recording at home or on the road and submitted the masters to Capitol, with Paul dictating to the record company what songs were destined to become hits. Paul and Ford also used the now-ubiquitous recording technique known as close miking, where the microphone is less than six inches from the singer's mouth. This produces a more intimate, less reverberant sound than when the singer is a foot or more from the microphone (see proximity effect). It also emphasizes low-frequency sounds in the voice. The result was a singing style that diverged strongly from earlier styles, such as vocals in musical comedies of the 1930s and 1940s.
After extensive touring and recording, the couple decided to leave Hollywood and moved to New York City to make the crossover from radio to television. They took a cramped apartment in Paul's former New York neighborhood, where they conceived and recorded their arrangement of "How High The Moon", a hard-swinging multi-layered arrangement containing twelve overdubs using the guitar and Ford's voice. While Capitol was reluctant to release this song, after they had scored several more hits with Capitol, including, 'Tennessee Waltz" and "Mockin' Bird Hill", "How High The Moon" was released in March 1951. Within a month, "How High The Moon" and "Mockin' Bird Hill" captured Your Hit Parade's number one and number two spots, respectively. During 1951, Ford and Paul earned $500,000, and had recorded more top ten hits for the year than Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and The Andrews Sisters combined. They also tied Patti Page for top selling recording artist, having sold more than six million records since January 1951.
In 1953, the couple recorded "Vaya con Dios" (Capitol 2486), the biggest-selling song of their career, which was released in June 1953, entered the Billboard charts on June 13, 1953, and reached number one on August 8 and remaining there for a total of nine weeks. The song lasted thirty-one weeks on the chart, and also reached number one on the Cash Box chart. Following this success of "Vaya con Dios", in 1953 the couple started to host The Les Paul and Mary Ford Show, their own daily television program broadcast from their Mahwah home. The show, which was five minutes long and sponsored by Listerine, ran from 1953 to 1960 on NBC television and in syndication. In early 1955, rock and roll came along and eventually threatened the popularity of many performers including Paul and Ford. In July 1958, Paul and Ford left Capitol and signed with the Columbia label, but the move failed to restore their declining career.
In November 1963, Ford released her first solo single, an English-language version of "Dominique", for Calendar Records. 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.
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.
