Tennessee Ernie Ford; Country, Gospel Singer : Entertainers: Popular performer hosted two television shows. He was one of the first artists to cross over into mainstream music with hits such as ‘Sixteen Tons.’

Tennessee Ernie Ford, the beloved pop and gospel balladeer whose recording of “Sixteen Tons” became a mantra for the blue-collar workers of the world, died Thursday. He was 72.

He had been hospitalized since Sept. 28 in Reston, Va., because of a liver ailment. He lived in Northern California but had been in Washington for a White House state dinner when he was stricken at Dulles International Airport and hospitalized.

“Mrs. Ford was at his side, as she has been throughout his illness,” said Claudia Smith, spokeswoman for HCA Reston Hospital.

One of the few entertainers to headline his own shows on daytime and prime-time television, Ford also will be remembered as one of the first country artists to cross over into the world of mainstream popular music, paving the way for Kenny Rogers, Willie Nelson and others.

He called himself “ol’ pea-picker” and said “bless your little pea-pickin’ hearts” thousands of times to millions of fans watching on television, or in person at concerts around the world.

With his warm, bass-baritone voice, ingratiating manner and genial style, Ford over four decades typified a kindly country uncle come to visit.

One critic said Ford brought “a satiric sophistication to country wit.” It was at least partly true, for his many fans included at least one sophisticate--Queen Elizabeth II, who became an admirer after seeing Ford perform at the London Palladium.

Ford was genuinely humble and seriously religious, ending nearly all of his TV shows and personal appearances with a hymn.

“Of all the singing I do,” he often said, “the hymns, spirituals and gospel songs not only give me the greatest pleasure, but seem to be something that truly needs to be done. . . . Hymns and spirituals are the finest love songs of all.”

“Ol’ Ern,” as Ford also called himself, was born Ernest Jennings Ford in Bristol, Tenn., where he spent much of his boyhood listening to country and gospel singers, and hanging around the radio station.

In 1937, the radio station hired him as a $10-a-week announcer and his voice was deemed so promising that he went to study for a year at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. He returned to announcing in Atlanta and Knoxville before joining the Air Corps soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He became a bombardier and an instructor in California and decided to remain in the state after World War II, finding a job as a deejay in San Bernardino.

He was working with an old friend, bandleader Cliffie Stone, at country station KXLA in Pasadena when he ventured an ad-lib at the beginning of an announcement:

“Hello out there, this is Tennessee Ernie Ford.”

The name stuck and so did another extemporaneous crack on one of Stone’s live broadcasts: “Hello all you pea-pickers out there.”

Ford became a regular on the Stone musical revue and his mellifluous speaking voice was heard by a representative of Capitol Records. In 1947, he was signed to a contract.

His first record was his own composition, “Shotgun Boogie.” That hit was followed by “Mule Train,” “Cry of the Wild Goose,” “Davy Crockett” and in 1955, “Sixteen Tons.”

It was a bluegrass tune written by Merle Travis, and the chorus was a paean to the frustrations of coal mining:

You load sixteen tons and what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt.

St. Peter don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go.

I owe my soul to the company store.

It became the fastest-selling record in the history of recording to that time: 1 million copies in three weeks and more than 5 million in U.S. sales.

The song became famous around the world, even more so than its singer, whose father and grandfather had worked in coal mines.

In 1974, when Ford toured the Soviet Union, he found that the Soviets had little idea who he was until he sang “Sixteen Tons” and then they sang along, many in English.

The song also brought an offer of a TV series. “The Ford Show” (1956-61) was not named for him but for his sponsor, the auto maker. It was a showcase for Ford’s country-Western songs, his catch phrases and reminiscences about growing up in the country. Backing him up were the choral groups The Voices of Walter Schumann and The Top 20.

But after five years, he tired of the demanding routine and left to spend more time at his sprawling home in Portola Valley near San Francisco or at his cattle ranch in Modoc County. In 1962, he was prevailed upon to return to television as a daytime host.

When he finally decided to leave series work for good in 1965, he said he still loved the work, “but I didn’t want to have it consume me.”

When he told ABC executives, they asked if he wanted more money.

“You don’t have that much,” he replied.

He made occasional TV guest appearances, particularly on the “Dolly” show starring Dolly Parton, and on “Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters” in the early 1980s.

Ford seemed to have a special kinship to those watching him at home. “They (his audiences) felt like when the time came for my show, they didn’t have to change clothes or put sterling on the table,” he told the Associated Press in 1990.

He also toured occasionally. “The nicest thing that people say to me now wherever I go is: ‘I feel like I know you.’ That’s before they say anything about the show or about my singing,” he said.

He recorded more than 80 albums. His gospel albums sold nearly 25 million copies and may prove a greater legacy than his early, popular songs.

He earned a Grammy for “Great Gospel Songs” in 1964 and was nominated for seven others. He also was nominated for two Emmys for his television work.

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan presented him with the Medal of Freedom.

As he entered his 70s, Ford started referring to himself as a “broken-down bass singer.” He did break down emotionally last year on the stage of the Country Music Assn.’s awards show in Nashville when he was elected by his peers to the Country Music Hall of Fame.

He buried his head in his hands when his selection was announced and then recovered to thank “all the pea-pickers who elected me.”

A favorite story late in his life was of the time he was working in Las Vegas and went into a coffee shop.

An elderly woman approached him and said:

“When I die, I want you there. I want that casket open. If I don’t move when you sing ‘How Great Thou Art,’ shut the thing and bury me.”

Ford is survived by his second wife, Beverly, and two sons. Betty, his wife of nearly 50 years, died in 1989.