http://hamptonroads.com/2010/06/jimmy-dean-song-and-sausageJimmy Dean: Of song and sausageJune 13, 2010
This story was originally published Dec. 13, 1999JIMMY DEAN'S 71, HE'S GOT A PILE OF MONEY AND HE'S HAVING A GOOD TIME AS HE AND HIS WIFE WAIT TO SEE IF THEIR "VIRGINIA" BECOMES OUR NEW STATE SONG.
By Lon Wagner
Jimmy Dean is “Jimmy Dean.”
He lives this side of Richmond, on a 200-acre spread along the James River, with his wife, Donna Meade Dean. They like to sit around in the evenings, look at the river and say, ``Ain't that pretty.'They dock their 110-foot yacht down below. It's named after his 1961 Grammy-winning song, ``Big Bad John.'
He wears a big ol' belt buckle with the Jimmy Dean foods logo on it. The cowboy-boot shaped J is formed with diamonds and the D tucked up against it is, too.
He'll pull that off his belt, hand it over and say, ``That may be the only $35,000 belt buckle you've seen in your life.'
“It's just a little ol' west Texas gawd, that's what I say.”
“I always say, `Gawd is good,'” his wife says.
He's got a Beemer parked out front with tags that read “SSG KING,” as in Sausage King.
Jimmy Dean's 71, he's got a pile of money, and he's having a good time. It's been a while since he made his money singing, but he and Donna wrote a tune that's a finalist to become the new state song.
That means they've been campaigning, with shoe leather and gasoline, singing ``Virginia' at just about any school, church or club that'll have them. The big media boys have been after them, trying to run down the Deans for donating campaign funds to a state senator on the song subcommittee.
They made it sound like bribery. Now, why would a world-famous songwriter have to bribe somebody to like his music?
They act like it's a crime that he's a professional. Like it's unfair that he's got all this.
Like something's wrong with being Jimmy Dean.
Being Jimmy Dean, country music star, folk character, sausage pitchman, has served the man well.
He looks the part. He's 6 foot 3 inches tall and stands an inch taller when he's wearing cowboy boots, which is often. He's thin, has blue eyes, gray-streaked hair and when he smiles his mouth curls up on one side like he's about to crack a funny.
He repeats wisdoms on many subjects, one of which is tangling with the media: ``They say the worst thing a reporter can do is quote you.'
Jimmy Dean ignores that one. Instead, he leans on what his Granddaddy used to say: “Jimmy, be yourself, because if somebody doesn't like you, they're not going to like somebody you're trying to be.”
So if he's got something to say, he says it. Then and there. If he thinks something's funny, he laughs. Either a short, sharp “HA!” or a double “Haha” or a high-pitched “Hee-hee.”
Donna talks right through these interjections as the Deans sit in their living room a few days before Thanksgiving chatting about their entry in the state song sweepstakes.
Jimmy had written a song called “Varina, Dear Old Varina” as an alma mater for the local high school. The Deans have adopted the school and have donated more than $200,000 over the past couple years.
They were at Donna family's house one day and sang the song. Donna's brother thought it was good and could be more than a school song. Later that night, Donna had a migraine, couldn't sleep and the lyrics for “Virginia” started to come to her.
She wrote them in about half an hour.
“The next day I sang them for Jimmy,” Donna says, “because when you've got a Grammy award-winning songwriter…”
`’Ha! That's me.'”
“. . . in the house you do kind of ask their opinion. He sort of fine-tuned my efforts…”
“I didn't do hardly a damn thing with those, but I tell you what, you're going to go a long way before you find better writing than ‘The Mother of the Fathers of our country.’ That is some line. I would've claimed it in a minute.”
Donna had a successful country music career before she met Jimmy, but “Virginia” is the first song they wrote together. She describes it as “simple, memorable and sing-alongable.”
“Haha, she coined another word.”
And yes, they did donate $1,750 to state Sen. Stephen Martin, a member of the song committee. Jimmy says they donated money to him before they wrote the song, after they wrote it and they'll give him some more as long as he keeps doing good things for Virginia.
Donna calls herself a “Demopublican,” and Jimmy says he's a “Republicrat.” They support politicians who do a good job, regardless.
“Now, Jimmy's good friends with George Bush, George Herbert Walker Bush,” Donna says. “But when Ross Perot came along, Jimmy calls George Bush and says, ‘I'm sorry, but I have to go with the person I think is gonna do the best job.’ And he did, he went with Ross Perot.”
“Then that little pantywaist dropped out,” Jimmy says.
Jimmy Dean made his name singing country music, then used that fame to open other doors.
He was born poor in Plainview, Texas, served in the Air Force, then put together a band called the Texas Wildcats.
His first hit came in 1953 when the song “Bumming Around” sold 700,000 records and made it to No. 5 on the country charts. Then he landed a spot on a Washington TV show called “Town and Country Time.”
From there, CBS carted him off to New York to host a live country show. On one of many trips from New York to Nashville, he jotted some lyrics on a piece of cardboard.
The song was “Big Bad John,” which sold more than 8 million copies and won him a Grammy.
“I wrote that song in an hour and a half. It may be like Hank Williams said, ‘If it takes over 45 minutes to write it, it ain't worth a (crap).”
He turned out five more top-40 hits, signed with ABC to do “The Jimmy Dean Show” and gave breaks to folks such as Roy Clark, Patsy Cline and Roger Miller.
But he never trusted the entertainment business. It's an often-told tale how he got the idea to make his own brand of sausage while having breakfast at a little ol' diner.
He was eating sausage and eggs, and he reached up and pulled a piece of gristle (he acts this out) about yeah big out of his teeth. He thought, “Good God Lord, there ought to be room for a quality sausage somewhere.”
He built a plant in Plainview and, to make a long story short, Jimmy Dean was soon producing the most well-known breakfast sausage in the country. Sara Lee Corp. bought out Jimmy Dean Meats in 1984 and left Jimmy with a stack of stock.
For the record, the Sausage King prefers patties over links, because that's the way his Granddaddy used to have sausage.
“I like to get a big chunk of sausage and flatten that sucker out like so, put it on a big hamburger bun with some onion and some MU-++++. Man, that'll hair-lip a county.”
Donna grew up in Richmond and moved to Nashville to pursue her singing. By the time they met in 1989, he was full-tilt Jimmy Dean, music legend, diamond-studded cowboy, sausage shill. The two were guests on the same Nashville show.
He heard her sing and couldn't get her out of his mind. He was 61, she was 36. He wrote her a fan letter. She got scared.
“I was totally and completely intimidated and just didn't know how to act around him. I just tried to get away.”
He kept pursuing, and they married 18 months later. Now, she wears a diamond solitaire that weighs 4 carats, with baguettes adding another 2 carats and there's a 2-carat band that's supposed to go around that. She can't wear it.
“It actually made my knuckle swell.”
Jimmy's got his own ring. It's the company logo. The J is shaped with diamonds, the D with rubies.
A little more west Texas gawd.
Jimmy and Donna Dean have all this and very few worries.
About the only thing Jimmy doesn't like about living here are the Richmond weather forecasters.
“Hands down the worst, and I'm talking about radio, the television, the newspaper. They can't find their (butts) with both hands if every finger was a flashlight.”
Neither are they fond of the gypsum plant across the river. It's an eyesore, Donna says.
“There's a cannon aimed at it, and one of these days we're going to get enough wine in us and fire it,” she says.
They have a house-sized party room called Casa Del Rio next to their swimming pool. Jimmy's got one of those TVs where you can watch one game and have the other game up in the corner and switch them, boom, boom. And today, there's a crew on the grounds hanging Christmas lights high in many of their trees.
With all this, why on earth would they want to get mixed up in the state song derby? They've surely gotten more publicity, not all of it good, than any of the other seven finalists.
“That one guy was really looking to cut us up,” Jimmy says of a Washington reporter. “I think he did cut us up pretty good.”
It's like being George W., Donna says, the front-runner makes a good target.
But they've kept on campaigning. They went to a Richmond recording studio, hired local talent and made a CD. They took it to radio stations and record stores, and they're giving the money from its sales to Varina High School.
“To me,” Donna says, “it would be the greatest honor…”
“That just said it all to me right there.”
“…that I could have bestowed…”
“It'd be a tremendous honor.”
“…upon me as a songwriter, other than writing the national anthem…”
“Well, Barbara Bush and I are going to change the national anthem. Ha! We talked about it and thought our national anthem ought to be ‘America the Beautiful.’”
Jimmy recites several lines from “The Star-Spangled Banner,” then several lines from “America the Beautiful” and then admits to a selfish motive for his proposed change.
He was invited a number of times to sing the national anthem at some rather prestigious sporting events. He had to say, “No, I can't sing it.” He could still sing “America the Beautiful,” though.
“But that national anthem, you got to have the tightest shorts on in the world to sing that. I mean, you got to really bind them in there.”
Hee-hee.
