Country Music Hall of Fame’s Jimmy Dean dies at 81

Posted by dford on June 16, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Jimmy Dean is considered one of the primary entertainers who helped bring country music into the mainstream in the 1960s. On February 23, 2010, Dean was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Jimmy Ray Dean “Jimmy Dean” lived to be 81. He was an American country music singer, television host, actor and businessman who left us on June 13, 2010. The song, “Big Bad John,” won Dean the 1962 Grammy Award for Best Country & Western Recording. Dean had several more Top 40 songs including a Top 10 in 1962 with “PT-109″, a song in honor of John F. Kennedy’s bravery in World War II.

As a result of being the creator of the Jimmy Dean Sausage brand he became a national television personality from the sausage commercials, but his singing and acting talents were well known as well.

In the 1960s another raise to fame credit for Dean was his song “Big Bad John”. He lived near Richmond, Virginia and was nominated for the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2010, although he died before being formally inducted.

Patsy Cline and Roy Clark got a kick start by Jimmy Dean. Dean hosted a TV variety show for CBS in the 1950s, signing with Columbia Records. He also hosted The Morning Show of the CBS News program in the 1950s to early 1960s.

Also in the 1960s Dean often hosted the Tonight Show, and by the mid-1960s he was part of the ABC-TV variety series, The Jimmy Dean Show. That show was one of the few to regularly present country music entertainers to a mainstream audience, including Roger Miller, George Jones, Charlie Rich, Buck Owens and some, like Joe Maphis, who seldom received network exposure. He is also remembered for his sketches with one of Jim Henson’s Muppets, Rowlf the Dog.

Throughout his life Jimmy Dean appeared on several TV talk shows and game shows, as well as performed on variety programs, including The Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace.

Acting, not to be forgotten when it came to Dean, was another of his many talents. He even had a supporting role in the 1971 James Bond movie, Diamonds Are Forever. It was after his TV show ended in 1966 that he took on the a role. Dean, acting side by side with Sean Connery, was the reclusive Las Vegas billionaire as ‘Diamonds’ Willard Whyte.

Later Dean also appeared as Josh Clements in six episodes of Daniel Boone (1967–70) and as Charlie Rowlands in two Fantasy Island episodes (1981–82), as well as on other TV shows and films – Come Back to the Five & Dime (1982) with Cher and Karen Black and Big Bad John (1990) with Ned Beatty…

Music/singing was Dean’s claim to fame, and his career remained strong into the mid-1960s. In 1965 he achieved a second number one country hit with the ballad “The First Thing Ev’ry Morning (And the Last Thing Ev’ry Night)”, and he had a Top 40 hit that year with “Harvest Of Sunshine.” In 1966, Dean signed with RCA Records and immediately had a Top 10 hit with “Stand Beside Me”.

In 1969 Dean founded the Jimmy Dean Sausage Company with his brother Don. The company did well, in part because of Dean’s natural and sometimes humorous commercials.

That success led to its acquisition in 1984 by Consolidated Foods, later renamed the Sara Lee Corporation. Dean remained involved in running the company, but the new corporate parent eventually began phasing him out of any management duties, a period that took a toll on his health. In January 2004, Dean said that Sara Lee had dropped him as the spokesman for the sausage brand, saying that he was too old.

Dean died on June 13, 2010 of natural causes at his Varina, Virginia, home at the age of 81. He is survived by his second wife Donna, three children, Garry, Connie and Robert and his nephew, country music singer Billy Dean.

Dean in Diamonds Are Forever (Photo/NCM)