A mighty balladeer: Actor and musician Burl Ives settles awhile in Galisteo

(Santa Fe New Mexican) In the early 1970s, radio listeners would occasionally hear a disc jockey play a 45-rpm single with the reedy voice of one of America’s best known balladeers singing of his love for a small New Mexico town. “It’s just a little village out of the way,” the mournful voice of Burl Ives intoned, “a little north of Albuquerque, little south of Santa Fe, where the jets from California leave their trails in the sky. I’m staying in Galisteo till the day I die.”

How Ives, a singing star as well-known in his time as Pete Seeger or Woody Guthrie, came to record this ode to the sleepy village of Galisteo is a complicated tale. Continued