R.I.P. Big Bad Jimmy Dean

Jimmy Dean, who died at age 81 a day shy of Flag Day, had one of those "only in America" lives. He grew up in poverty, joined the Air Force, learned the accordion, started a band, became a huge country singer/songwriter, hosted his own hit TV show, and became synonymous with a dazzling array of processed pork products.

He is best known for his 1961 #1 hit "Big Bad John," a haunting ballad of a coal miner who heroically and selflessly saves the lives of his mining brethren. Guess John wasn't so bad after all.


In 1969, with his TV and music careers drying up, Jimmy was determined not to be a showbiz casualty.

As his AP obit said, ''I've seen so many people in this business that made a fortune. They get old and broke and can't make any money. ... I tell you something, ... no one's going to play a benefit for Jimmy Dean.'' So he put his childhood experience of pig slaughtering to good use and started the hog-wildly successful Jimmy Dean Sausage company, in the process creating a new job title: celebrity sausagier. He sold the company to Sara Lee in 1984 and died with a fortune estimated at $75 million.

When I was in college, I spent summers caddying at the super-exclusive Wee Burn Country Club in tony Darien, CT. At the annual member-guest tournament in 1986, I carried bags for a well-heeled member and his guest, a Big Bad guest by the name of Jimmy Dean.

Loud, gregarious and fun as all get out, Mr. Dean was like a Texas version of Rodney Dangerfield's character in Caddyshack. He told one filthy but good-natured one-liner after another and I'm sure he tipped me handsomely (though not in sausage). At one point he said some S.O.B. he knew was "so dumb he thought Moby Dick was a social disease." As a joke, it's barely Dangerfield-worthy, and that may have been the last time I heard the term "social disease," but back then I thought it was so hilarious that I wrote it down when I got home.

R.I.P. and TCB, Jimmy Dean: Veteran, Country singer, TV host, Sausage visionary, foul-mouthed gold guest and fourth-rate gag writer. May you thrive and prosper amongst the Tumblin' Tumbleweeds.