Mary Ford - Early Career

Early Career

By 1943, Colleen Summers, with Vivian Earles and June Widener, 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. 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.

From 1946 to 1948 Summers was a regular actor in the drama portion of The All-Star Western Theatre, a radio program hosted by Foy Willing and his Riders of the Purple Sage.

By 1947 Summers became romantically involved with 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. After Paul's wife Virginia took their two sons to Chicago, Summers moved in with Paul in his house on Carson Avenue, where she took care of him as he recuperated from the effects of the car accident.

By July 1949 Summers was performing under the stage name of Mary Ford. To avoid confusing her established western music audience, initially Paul named his musical partner "Mary Lou", but later selected the stage name "Mary Ford" from a telephone directory so her name would be almost as short as his.

In 1949, Paul and Webb divorced, and he married Ford on December 29, 1949 in a "small private ceremony without much fanfare" in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Ford and Paul had three children: a baby born on November 26, 1954, who died four days later; Mary Colleen Paul, who they fostered since 1958; and Robert Ralph "Bobby" Paul (born in 1959).