Ed Ames Dies At 95, Ames Brothers’ Singer, ‘Daniel Boone” Star

Ed Ames has passed away. Ed Ames was the youngest of the Ames Brothers, a popular group from the 1950s that sang in musicals and television. He was 95.

The last survivor of the four singing brothers, Ames died May 21 from Alzheimer’s disease, his wife, Jeanne Ames, said Saturday.

“He had a wonderful life,” she said.

On television, Ames was likely best known for his role as Mingo, the Oxford-educated Native American in the 1960s adventure series “Daniel Boone” that starred Fess Parker as the famous frontiersman. He also was the center of a bit on “The Tonight Show” that — thanks to his painfully uncanny aim with a hatchet — became one of the show’s most memorable surprise moments.

Ames had guest roles in TV series such as “Murder, She Wrote” and “In the Heat of the Night,” and toured frequently in musicals, performing such popular songs as “Try to Remember” and the song that became his biggest hit single, “My Cup Runneth Over.”

He and his brothers were part of a number of pop quartets in the 1950s. These included the Four Aces (also known as the Four Lads), Gaylords (also known as the Hilltoppers), Lancers (also called the Four Knights), Ink Spots (still around from an earlier era), and the Mills Brothers. But the Ames Brothers — Ed, Joe, Gene and Vic — had a unique tone: they were basses and baritones, not tenors.

Their recordings of “Rag Mop,” “Sentimental Me” and “Undecided” became big hits, and they launched a busy career appearing on TV variety shows, recording 40 albums and playing in night clubs and auditoriums across the country.

By the end of the 1950s, rock ‘n’ roll had overtaken the pop charts and singing quartets were on the decline. They were tired of their constant travels and being away from their families. The finale for Ed came when he arrived home unexpectedly and his wife called to their 3-year-old daughter: “Who is it?” The girl replied, “One of the Ames Brothers.”

“That did it,” he told a reporter. “My brothers and I agreed that we had all had it and should go our separate ways.” The group, which was earning $20,000 a week, played its last engagement at the Sahara in Las Vegas on New Year’s 1961.

Ed’s efforts to establish himself as a solo singer were not immediately successful and he turned to acting. He almost lost his house before he found a role in a production of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.”

In the long-running musical “The Fantasticks,” he sang “Try to Remember,” which became one of his theme songs. He joined the traveling company of Gower Champion’s “Carnival” and transferred to the New York company until the show’s final performance.

In a role that presaged his future role on “Daniel Boone,” he then won attention as the stoic Native American in the 1963 Broadway play “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” with Kirk Douglas and Gene Wilder in the adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel.

Ames earned top money at Las Vegas casinos and in hotel supper clubs and toured extensively in the musicals “Man of La Mancha,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “South Pacific” and “I Do, I Do.”

“I Do, I Do” provided his biggest hit single, “My Cup Runneth Over,” a gold record winner in 1967. He had another hit in 1968 with “Who Will Answer?”

It was during his run on “Daniel Boone” that he contributed to what was called the longest sustained burst of laughter in the history of “The Tonight Show.”

He was convinced to show off the skills he had learned while playing Mingo in a 1965 episode. Ames’s target was a silhouette of a cowboy painted on wood. He threw the hatchet. It landed on squarely on the cowboy’s crotch.

Ames was born Edmund Dantes Urick, in Malden, Massachusetts. He is the youngest child of 11, four of whom died as children. Their parents were Ukrainian immigrants, and their mother taught them to read Shakespeare as well as to appreciate the music they heard on Saturdays from the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts.

The Urick Brothers were the four youngest boys who began singing in local events. Ed was in high school at the time they began singing in nightclubs, but a six-footer with an husky voice was able pass as 21.

Abe Burrows in New York suggested that the name be changed because Urick is difficult to recall. Ames was the brothers’ choice.

The other three brothers continued to perform and record, but they received less attention than Ed. Vic died in 1978. Gene in 1997. Joe in December 2007.

Ames and Sara Cacheiro had three children together: Sonja Ronald Linda. In 1978, the couple divorced and he then married Jeanne Arnold in 1998.

This report was written by the late Bob Thomas, a writer for Associated Press. He contributed from Los Angeles.