Jimmy Dean, the musician, actor and entrepreneur, was instrumental in
the mainstreaming of country music, a genre that now enjoys popularity
in some regions of the United States but which, back in the 1960s, was accorded
little respect by mass media. Jimmy Dean had a #1 hit in the US and
England with his song "Big Bad John," which established his fame,
fame that continues to this day due to his long stint as a spokesman
for "Jimmy Dean Pure Pork Sausage," a company he founded and then sold
to Consolidated Foods in 1984. He continued as the pitchman for the
eponymous brand for 20 years.
Jimmy Dean, a distant cousin of the actor
James Dean, was born Jimmy Ray Dean
on August 10, 1928 in Plainview, Texas. He took to the life of a
professional singer after serving in the U.S. Air Force during the late
1940s. Dean began building his reputation as a musician touring with
his band, The Texas Wildcats, which featured
Roy Clark as lead guitarist. In
1953, he scored his first hit, "Bummin' Around."
Dean landed a gig as the host of a TV program in the Washington D.C.
market, "Town and Country Time." (The District of Columbia has in many
ways always been a Southern town.) Dean was a promoter of rising
country acts, and such top country singers as Clark and
Patsy Cline got their starts with Dean. (He
eventually fired Clark but later promoted his career.) Dean
subsequently moved to New York after signing with Columbia Records,
where he hosted a TV variety show for the CBS network.
In 1961, his song "Big Bad John" went to No. 1 on the Billboard charts
and won him the 1962 Grammy Award for Best Country & Western Recording.
Several of his subsequent songs charted in the Top 40, and he scored a
Top 10 hit in 1962 with a song commemorating President John F.
Kennedy's patrol torpedo boat, "PT 109." Because of his affability and
his burgeoning popularity, he occasionally was booked to guest-host
"The Tonight Show." ABC offered him a variety show in the mid-1960s,
and Dean used it as a forum to present country music on his terms, as a
mainstream entertainment. His show offered the first major TV exposure
to a number of country singers, including
George Jones,
Charlie Rich, and
Buck Owens. His show also introduced
the first Muppet, Jim Henson's Rowlf
the Dog.
Aside from a featured part as a
Howard Hughes-like billionaire in
the James Bond movie
Diamantenfieber (1971)
(Dean said he was offered the role on the basis of his having had a #1
hit with "Big John" in Britain, which surprised him as it had been a
decade before), Dean has mostly stuck to his music and the business he
founded in 1969, "Jimmy Dean Pure Pork Sausage." The TV commercials
featuring the very likable Dean were the best advertising the new brand
could have had, and it became #1 in its product category.
In the fall of 2004, Jimmy Dean published his autobiography, "30 Years
of Sausage, 50 Years of Ham." He semi-retired and lived with
his second wife, the former singer Donna Meade Dean until his death in 2010.
