Jimmy Dean

Jimmy Ray Dean was an American country music singer, television host, actor, and businessman whose career ran through some of the busiest years of postwar radio, network television, country music, and popular film. He was born on August 10, 1928, in Seth Ward, Texas, and raised in nearby Plainview, the son of George Otto Dean and Ruth Taylor. His mother taught him to play piano when he was 10, and he later traced his interest in music to the Seth Ward Baptist Church. After serving in the U.S. Air Force in the late 1940s, he dropped out of high school and became a professional entertainer.

Dean first built an audience in Washington, D.C., radio and television. In 1954 he hosted Town and Country Time on WARL-AM with his Texas Wildcats, becoming popular in the Mid-Atlantic region. Patsy Cline and Roy Clark got their starts on the show. In 1957, while living in Arlington County, Virginia, Dean hosted Country Style on WTOP-TV, which CBS picked up nationally as The Morning Show. That same year he hosted his first prime-time series, The Jimmy Dean Show, on CBS.

His biggest musical success came in 1961 with “Big Bad John,” a recitation song about a heroic miner. Recorded in Nashville, it reached number one on the Billboard pop chart, sold more than one million copies, earned a gold disc, and won the 1962 Grammy Award for Best Country & Western Recording. Dean continued to chart with songs including “PT-109,” “The First Thing Ev’ry Morning (And the Last Thing Ev’ry Night),” “Stand Beside Me,” “Sweet Misery,” “A Thing Called Love,” “Slowly,” and “The One You Say Good Morning To.” In 1976, he had another million-seller with “I.O.U.,” a tribute to his mother and mothers everywhere.

On television, Dean helped bring country music to a wider network audience with the ABC prime-time variety series The Jimmy Dean Show, which ran from 1963 to 1966. The program featured country performers such as Roger Miller, George Jones, Charlie Rich, Buck Owens, and Joe Maphis, along with comedy and popular music guests. It also gave Jim Henson his first national exposure with Rowlf the Dog. Henson later offered Dean a 40 percent interest in his production company, but Dean declined, saying he had done nothing to truly earn it and that Henson deserved the rewards for his own work.

Dean also worked as an actor, appearing in early seasons of Daniel Boone and later playing the reclusive Las Vegas billionaire Willard Whyte in the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever in 1971, starring Sean Connery. Beyond entertainment, he created the Jimmy Dean sausage brand and became the voice and face of its television commercials. He lived near Richmond, Virginia, and was nominated for the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2010, dying before his induction that year at age 81. His words still fit the life he led: “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.”