The Jimmy Dean Show

There are many red herrings to put young people off the scent of the real significance of singer, actor, and tv personality Jimmy Dean (1928-2010). The smell of sausage may be the initial distraction. While Jimmy Dean most assuredly did create the eponymous line of frozen sausages in 1969, it wasn’t his main jam. As with Arthur Treacher, the guy’s side hustle outlasted his fame and what the guy was primarily known for in his own time. And likewise (as if the picture above didn’t already tell the story), this one was quite a different guy from actor James Dean. In fact, this one wasn’t a James at all. In a case parallel to that of Harry Truman, he was born a “Jimmy”.

While Dean and his Texas Wildcats had had hits on the country charts going back to the early 1950s, it was with the 1961 recitation song “Big Bad John”, which went to #1 on the pop charts, that Dean first gained serious national attention. Later singles that hit the pop charts included “PT-109” (#8, 1962, a pro-Kennedy country song!), “The Cajun Queen” (#22, 1962), “Dear Ivan” (#24, 1961. Can you imagine? a pro-peace, anti-war country song to an imagined Soviet counterpart?), and “I.O.U.” (#35, 1976, a shamelessly sentimental Mother’s Day number that helped revive talking songs, along with such things as Red Sovine’s “Teddy Bear” and C.W. McCall’s “Convoy”.)

Since the mid 1950s Dean had hosted his own local TV shows on Southern stations. By the late ’50s he was tried nationally with various shows of his own, and was a guest on the variety programs of Perry Como, Steve Allen, Pat Boone, Vic Damone, Dinah Shore, Val Parnell, and others. He was the first person ever to guest host for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. The most successful iteration of The Jimmy Dean Show ran from 1963 and 1966, and is most noteworthy from where sit for being the platform from which Jim Henson introduced his character Rowlf the Dog. My informed assumption is that Henson and Dean knew each other from the local TV scene in the Washington D.C./ Virginia area. Two of the show’s writers Frank Peppiatt and John Aylesworth, later went on to create Hee Haw.

Dean only dabbled in acting. His best known role is probably that of the hick millionaire Willard Whyte in the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever (1971). On TV he did over a dozen episodes of Daniel Boone, and was a regular on the Dale Robertson series J.J. Starbuck. He was in episodes of Fantasy Island and Murder She Wrote, and the tv movies Rolling Man (1972, starring Dennis Weaver) and The City (1977) with Don Johnson and Robert Forster. In 1990 he starred in Big Bad John, a screen adaptation of his most famous song, directed by western auteur Burt Kennedy. The fact that that movie is NOT his most famous screen role will tell you a little bit about it.

Yet I’m sure he didn’t mind, for he was a very rich man by that point, and all on account of this:

A Man and His Sausage

For more on show biz history consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and stay tuned for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.