Jimmy Dean
Biography
The average man on the street is most likely to recognize Jimmy Dean from the line of smoked sausage that bears his name, but prior to becoming a spokesman for pork products, Dean was a successful television personality and a country hitmaker noted for his half-spoken narrative songs. Dean was born Seth Ward in Plainview, TX, in 1928, and grew up poor, often working on farms as a boy to help make ends meet. His mother taught him piano starting at age ten, and he went on to pick up guitar, harmonica, and accordion. He joined the Merchant Marines at age 16, and after two years he enlisted in the Air Force, where he first performed publicly with a band called the Tennessee Haymakers. The Haymakers played venues near the Washington, D.C., base at which Dean was stationed, and when he left the service in 1948, he remained in the area and formed a new group called the Texas Wildcats. He eventually scored a record deal with Four Star, and his first hit, "Bummin' Around," reached the country Top Ten in 1953.During the mid-'50s, Dean hosted a local television show devoted to country music, giving important early exposure to regulars Patsy Cline and Roy Clark. The show proved popular enough that CBS offered him his own national program in 1957, though it wasn't as successful.
Selected Discography
Here's a funny thing - my mother was babysitting for his kids when she got her "visitor" for the first time and left the house after his wife, Sharon, provided her with a diaper to use as a "rag". She used to babysit for Virginia Dick (aka Patsy Cline).
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