Jimmy Dean

Did You Know?

• Dean's 1961 hit "Big Bad John" sold over one million copies and won the 1962 Grammy Award for Best Country & Western Recording.
• He was the first guest host during Johnny Carson's tenure on The Tonight Show, hosting for the first time on January 14, 1963.
• Jim Henson offered Dean a 40% interest in his production company after The Jimmy Dean Show gave Rowlf the Dog national exposure, but Dean declined.
• Dean owned a 110-foot yacht named Big Bad John, on which he hosted President George Bush on numerous occasions.
• In 1976, Dean achieved a million-seller with the recitation song "I.O.U.", a tribute to his mother, released a few weeks before Mother's Day.

Biography

Dean was born on August 10, 1928, in Seth Ward, Texas, and raised in nearby Plainview. He was the son of George Otto Dean and his second wife, Ruth Taylor, who taught him to play piano at age 10. He credited the Seth Ward Baptist Church for his interest in music. After serving in the U.S. Air Force in the late 1940s, he dropped out of high school and became a professional entertainer. At age 22, he married his first wife, Mary Sue, in 1950. His first hit, "Bumming Around", came in 1953 on the 4 Star label. He signed with Columbia Records in 1957. Dean had minor pop hits including "Little Sandy Sleighfoot" and "Sing Along", the latter used as the theme for TV's Sing Along with Mitch. In 1954, he hosted the Washington, D.C., radio program Town and Country Time on WARL-AM, and with his Texas Wildcats became popular in the Mid-Atlantic region. Patsy Cline and Roy Clark got their starts on the show. Clark, Dean's lead guitarist, was fired for chronic tardiness and replaced by Billy Grammer. In 1955, Town and Country Time moved to WMAL-TV on weekday afternoons. Dean and the Texas Wildcats also appeared on Town and Country Jamboree on WMAL-TV on Saturdays. In 1957, while living in Arlington County, Virginia, he hosted Country Style on WTOP-TV, which CBS picked up nationally as The Morning Show from April 8 to December 13, 1957. He also hosted a prime time summer series, The Jimmy Dean Show, on CBS from June 22 to September 14, 1957, and later from September 14, 1958 to June 1959 on weekday and Saturday afternoons.