Jimmy Dean, country crooner and hometown hero, is also America’s pork prince: ‘One hell of a man’

4 minutes, 5 seconds Read

[ad_1]

Join Fox News for entry to this content material

Plus particular entry to pick out articles and different premium content material together with your account – free of cost.

Please enter a legitimate e mail handle.

Jimmy Dean’s title greets Americans from coast to coast within the grocery store sausage aisle.

The man himself was a country crooner, gifted storyteller and TV host earlier than he grew to become the Texas Panhandle’s Prince of Porkness.

“He’s still our hometown hero,” KayLyn Bean, director of the Jimmy Dean Museum in Plainview, Texas, instructed Fox News Digital.

SPAM IS SIZZLING: GLOBAL FAVORITE SINCE WORLD WAR II IS AT CENTER OF SUSHI CRAZE

“He grew up the poorest of the poor. He was raised by a single mother. She cut hair to make ends meet. That’s what makes it such a great story.”

Dean helped remake country music, weekend breakfast and the fortunes of his hometown. 

Don and Jimmy Dean

Brothers Don and Jimmy Dean in entrance of the household’s plant in Plainview, Texas. (Courtesy The Jimmy Dean Museum)

Dean was born in 1928 and dropped out of highschool at age 16 to hitch the U.S. Merchant Marine, through the top of World War II

He later enlisted within the U.S. Army Air Force and served at Bolling Air Base in Washington, D.C.

SOME US SCHOOLS CANCEL CLASSES AHEAD OF APRIL 8 SOLAR ECLIPSE TO ENSURE SAFETY

“After his discharge in 1948, he assembled his band, the Texas Wildcats. and worked [in] Washington-area clubs, fire halls and lodges,” the Country Music Hall of Fame recounts in Dean’s member biography.

“We played every dive in Washington at one time or another,” Dean later recalled. 

“And dives is what they were.”

Jimmy Dean Sausage in supermarket.

Packages of Jimmy Dean sausage are displayed on the market at a grocery retailer in New York.  (JB Reed/Bloomberg through Getty Images)

He discovered approval for internet hosting “The Jimmy Dean Show,” a nationally televised selection program that featured the highest performers of the day. 

Among different acts, it was reportedly the first present to function Jim Henson’s Muppets.

“We played every dive in Washington at one time or another. And dives is what they were.”

“Big, Bad John,” Dean’s 1961 Grammy Award-winning crossover hit, reached No. 1 on each the country and pop charts and catapulted him to higher stardom.

“It was country music’s first gold record,” says Bean of the Jimmy Dean Museum.

GRATEFUL DEAD, STEELY DAN SET ROCKY MOUNTAIN RHYTHM FOR DENVER CHEF JUSTIN CUCCI

The success of the tune helped give Dean the muscle to launch the Jimmy Dean Meat Co. along with his brother Don in 1969.

Jimmy Dean

CIRCA 1960: Photo of country music singer Jimmy Dean. (GAB Archive/Redferns)

“The brothers ground the meat, while their mother seasoned it,” based on an account at Biography.com. 

“Eventually the factory employed 150 people and had annual payroll of more than $3 million — sizable figures in a farming town of 18,000 in a time of depressed agricultural prices and dwindling underground water,” Texas Monthly reported in a 1983 function story by Fryar Calhoun.

“It started a hog boom in the Panhandle, an area previously devoted mainly to cotton and cattle.”

Jimmy Dean with sausage

Jimmy Dean was a country music star and TV host who discovered futher fame because the founder of a grocery store breakfast sausage patty model bearing his title.  (Courtesy Jimmy Dean Museum; Tom Kelley/Getty Images)

Dean donated $1 million to Wayland Baptist University in Planview earlier than he died in 2010. His property continues to help his hometown right now. 

Wayland Baptist University introduced in January that it obtained a reward from the Jimmy and Donna Dean Estate. 

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR LIFESTYLE NEWSLETTER 

The undisclosed quantity, the varsity stated, “was the largest estate gift commitment in the school’s 115-year history.”

“Big Bad John,” in the meantime, stays Dean’s signature hit. It tells the story of an imposing drifter with a 6-foot-5-inch body and violent previous who dies saving 20 males in a mine collapse. 

An image from the Jimmy Dean Museum.

The Jimmy Dean Museum is positioned in Plainview, Texas, the Panhandle hometown of the country music star-turned-sausage king.  (Courtesy The Jimmy Dean Museum)

“At the bottom of this mine lies one hell of a man,” Dean boomed on the finish of his legacy recording. 

The final line was later deemed too controversial and modified to “big, big man.” 

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

But you’ll be able to nonetheless discover the identical authentic phrases right now.

The phrase “Here lies one hell of a man” is etched into Dean’s piano-shaped headstone in Varina, Virginia.

For extra Lifestyle articles, go to www.foxnews.com/life-style.

[ad_2]

Source hyperlink

Similar Posts