Tag: Music

RIP Jimmy Dean

Mr. Jimmy Dean has gone to that great sausage maker in the sky:

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Jimmy Dean, a country music star known for his hit about a workingman hero, ”Big Bad John,” and an entrepreneur known for his sausage brand, died on Sunday. He was 81.

His wife, Donna Meade Dean, said her husband died at their Henrico County, Va., home.

We always admired Mr. Dean hear at the BRI—and not just because of “Big Bad John.” We wrote a little something about him some years ago in an article about people who had made the Big Time—despite not having done a lot of schooling:

The singer-songwriter left school at 16 and joined the Merchant Marines. He knew that fame could be fleeting, so after his prime-time TV variety show ran its course, he founded the Jimmy Dean Sausage Company and kept his TV appearances to folksy sausage commercials. He sold the company to Sara Lee in 1991, but is still chairman of the board.

And oh man, check this out, Jimmy doing that great song must have been just a year ago or so:

A World Class Show Stopper

We’re working on an article for Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader (due out in November 2010) called “Show Stoppers.” It’s about concerts or theater shows or whatever that had to be stopped mid-performance for one humorous or interesting reason or another. Here’s an excerpt—and it just happens to be our favorite. (We’ll tell you why at the end of the piece in the “Special Note” section.)

Happy Birthday, Arnold Layne

Today is the anniversary of the 1967 release of the very first song by the great British psychedlic-rock (and so much more) band, Pink Floyd. The song was Arnold Layne, written and sung by Syd Barret. It’s about a guy who steals women’s clothes from washing lines and wears them. He is unfortunately caught doing this, and “doors bang, chaingang.” Poor Arnold. Wikipedia has quite a bit of information on the song here.

Hello, I’m Johnny Cash

Today is the Man in Black’s birthday. He died in 2003, but if he were still alive, Cash would be 78 today.

Cash’s signature song was “Folsom Prison Blues.” But Cash didn’t get the idea for the song while doing time. He got it while watching a documentary in 1951 about the legendarily tough northern California penitentiary called Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison. It struck him that most people live in a prison of one kind or another, and that they would relate to a song about prison (even a real one) as much as they would to a song about the frequent country song subject matter of drinking, trains, or broken hearts.
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