Come Back to the Live Times, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean

Or
Rebel without a Saus-age
(Mad Props to Lori Ann)

Or
Big Dead Jim

Or
At the Bottom of This Grave Lies a Dead, Dead Man

Or
Come Back to the Five and Died, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
(Variation on a Theme from Phil)

Or
Somebody Call Abe Frohman
(Merit a Monty)

Or
Well, you said you didn't want to know how the sausage was made!
(More fanfare for Phil)

Or
Whyte Out
Jimmy Dean, Rowlf the Dog’s right-hand man in the 1960s, has died at the age of 81. The country singer is best remembered for not singing his 1961 hit Big Bad John, which won the 1962 Grammy for Best Country & Western recording. The crossover success of the song helped secure Dean a spot as Johnny Carson’s first guest host of The Tonight Show, which in turn helped get him his own talk show, with Jim Henson under the desk working the sock puppet, which he used to help start the careers of Patsy Cline and Roy Clark and bring other country stars to a mainstream audience. He maintained his success in signing about the doomed with another Top 40 hit: PT 109, about John F. Kennedy’s naval career. After his show ended, he sort of acted, with his best known role was as the Howard Hughes-esque tycoon Willard Whyte, held hostage by Bambi and Thumper and rescued by James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever. Most remember him now as the founder of the Jimmy Dean Sausage company, which was profitable within 6 months of launch, in part due to Dean’s folksy humor in the commercials. He got fired when the company started targeting a younger audience, so he is blameless for the company’s latest abomination: the Chocolate Chip Pancake and Sausage on a Stick (even better with Baconnaise). Dean is to be interred in a piano-shaped mausoleum. Beats a sausage casing.