Priceless Tennessee Ernie Ford Medal Donated to Country Music Hall of Fame
CMT.com reports that Jeffrey Buckner Ford, son of Tennessee Ernie Ford, has donated his father’s Presidential Medal of Freedom to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. The elder Ford, whose biggest hit, “Sixteen Tons,” led to songwriter Merle Travis’s being called “seditious” by the Federal Bureau of Investigation when it began climbing the charts in 1955, was enormously popular despite never having any entertainment business ambitions other than to have his own radio program.