[5] He grew up in White Plains, New York, served in the Marines, studied literature in college and, beginning in 1955, taught English at the University of Maine.
[6] This introduced him to the lumber camp singing tradition of Maine, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island and he soon found his calling.
[10] For more than forty years, Ives continued to explore the northeastern oral tradition, publishing his findings with some regularity.
[6] A reviewer has commented: "His books on Gorman, Scott, and Doyle... are personal accounts of discovery, as much as studies of regional and occupational singing traditions.
Ives’s focus on the singers who gave him texts and on his own adventures in the field have made his studies models of contextual and reflexive scholarship.