Tennessee Ernie Ford's Birthplace

Ford's road to fame ran through a conservatory and a bomber. After announcing at Bristol's WOPI he studied voice at the Cincinnati Conservatory, then served as a bombardier in the Army Air Corps. In California he took the name Tennessee Ernie and built the Pea Picker character; Cliffie Stone put him on Hometown Jamboree. Capitol signed him in 1949, and Mule Train was his first number-one record. On NBC's College of Musical Knowledge he introduced Sixteen Tons in 1955. A Bristol house where he once lived is now a museum, and he died on October 17, 1991.

What the plaque says

Tennessee Ernie Ford's Birthplace Ernest Jennings Ford was born 13 February 1919 in Bristol, Tennessee. In 1937 he began his career at WOPI Radio in Bristol. Known professionally as Tennessee Ernie Ford, he began his rise to fame in 1948 with Capital Records. The 1955 success of sixteen Tons brought him to prime-time TV as host of the Ford Show (1956-1961) and the Tennessee Ernie Ford Show (1961-1965). His 1990 induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame, placement of three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his achievements in radio, television, and recording, and receipt of the Presidential Medal of freedom all reflect his status as one of America's top entertainers.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bristol's State Street and the 1927 Sessions — 0.8 mi
  The Tennessee side of the street that is also the state line, where producer Ralph Peer recorded 76 songs in the summer of 1927, with the Birthplace of Country Music Museum a few blocks away in Virginia.
• Rocky Mount Museum — 15 mi
  William Cobb's log house at Piney Flats, where Governor William Blount ran the Southwest Territory from 1790 to 1792, now a living-history museum set in 1791 with a reconstructed cabin for the enslaved.
• Warriors' Path State Park — 17 mi
  A state park around Fort Patrick Henry Lake on the Holston at Kingsport, named for the Great Indian Warpath, with an unfinished late-1800s railroad grade, mountain-bike trails and a marina.
• Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park — 17 mi
  A shoal on the Watauga River where the Transylvania Company bought about 20 million acres from the Cherokee in March 1775, Dragging Canoe refused, and the Overmountain Men mustered in 1780.

More markers nearby

• Evan Shelby — 1.0 mi
• The Bristol Municipal Stadium — 1.0 mi
• King College — 3.4 mi
• John Isaac Cox — 7.2 mi