Best known for his million-selling 1961 hit "Big Bad John"; the song topped both Billboard magazine's country and Hot 100 charts. On the Billboard country charts, Dean had one other No. 1 hit: 1965's "The First Thing Ev'ry Morning and the Last Thing Ev'ry Night".
Country singer.
During the run of his TV show, Dean was offered 40% ownership of Jim Henson's Muppets Inc., but he declined because that he felt he didn't have anything to do with Henson's work and it was unfair to profit from the puppeteer's labor.
Founded the Jimmy Dean Sausage Company in 1969 in his hometown of Plainview, Texas, and sold it in 1984 to the Sara Lee Corporation.
In January 2004, was dismissed by the Sara Lee Corp. as product spokesman for Jimmy Dean Sausage, the very sausage he founded more than 30 years ago. The Chicago-based food products firm will retain the rights to Dean's name and likeness.
Is the creator of Jimmy Dean Breakfast Foods (sausage, bacon, sandwiches, etc.).
Other major country hits in his career included "P.T. 109" (1962, based on the World War II sinking of John F. Kennedy's torpedo boat) and the million-selling ode of thanks to his mother, "I.O.U." (1976).
Several trivia and source books, including Billboard's Top Forty Book, mistakenly gave his birth name as Seth Ward. Actually, Seth Ward is the tiny unincorporated community outside Plainview where Dean was born.
Was working at the Desert Inn hotel when he was cast as Willard Whyte in Diamonds Are Forever (1971). Whyte was clearly modeled after Howard Hughes, who owned the Desert Inn and was therefore, by extension, Dean's employer at the time.
When his "Big Bad John" was first released, it ended with the words "at the bottom of this mine lies one hell of a man". It was changed on later releases to "at the bottom of this mine lies a big, big man".