On this very day, Jimmy Dean’s song, “Big Bad John” achieved something that no country song had done –gold record status. He went on to win a Grammy award for Best Country & Western Recording.
According to the entertainment authority IMDb.com “Jimmy Dean was instrumental in the mainstreaming of country music, a genre that now ranks as the most popular in the United States but which, back in the 1960s, was accorded little respect in the mass media.”
Dean enjoyed a long career as a singer, actor and entrepreneur. In 1969, he founded “Jimmy Dean Pure Pork Sausage,” and with TV ads featuring the affable Dean it became #1 in its product category.
In the fall of 2004, he published his autobiography, “30 Years of Sausage, 50 Years of Ham.”
Dean died on June 13, 2010 at 81.
Here are some of the lyrics to his famous song.
Every morning at the mine, you could see him arrive.
He stood 6 foot 6, weighed 245.
Kind of broad at the shoulders, narrow at the hip.
And everybody knew you didn’t give no lip to Big John.Big John
Big John
Big Bad John
Big JohnNow they never re-opend that wortheless pit,
they just placed a marble stand in front of it.
These few words are written on that stand,
‘At the bottom of this mine, lies one Hell of a man, Big John’Big John
Big John
Big Bad John
Big John.Country singer and sausage guru Jimmy Dean
