Snapshot: The Real Jimmy Dean (Or One Hell Of A Jimmy Dean Impersonator) And Some Anonymous Woman
i suppose i could have found a snapshot of any number of country & western performers, and it's just happenstance that the one i found featured Jimmy Dean. i suppose there's nothing providential about it all. coincidence, the statisticians tell us, is just that, coincidence. nothing more.
but there's no country singer i have a more personal relationship with than Jimmy Dean. well, i did meet Sleepy Labeef one time. in fact, i sat around a table and Sleepy told stories, and they were wonderful stories, and Sleepy was quite a fellow, but Sleepy's more of a rockabilly guy anyway, and, whatever, i've still got to put Jimmy Dean first, though i've never actually met Jimmy Dean in the flesh. or might have met --- he's dead now, since 2010. but anyway, here's my Jimmy Dean story.
"Big Bad John" was Jimmy Dean's greatest all-time hit, and it's probably the way a lot of people heard of him first. nowadays, of course, his brand of sausage may be his # 1 claim to fame, and there may be people who have never even heard of "Big Bad John," and eat Jimmy Dean sausage everyday. but anyway, that's where i heard of Jimmy Dean first, on that "Big Bad John" record, and that's the way i'll always think of him.
the record came out in September, 1961. in October, 1961, my father committed suicide. i don't know whether i had already purchased the record before my father killed himself, or when, but anyway, i found myself in possession of the 45 rpm of what became a # 1 hit. i can imagine myself going uptown to Woolworth's and buying the record, but it's possible that someone had felt sorry for me and had bought it for me. who knows. those were pretty bleak times in my life, even before my father died. and listening to records was always a way to escape, i suppose, though i never have thought about it much.
so I had the record, and my father was dead, and then at some point i got the measles. it could have been the chicken pox. i had them both at some point in my childhood. i doubt if my mother remembers which one it was.
anyway, i was sick and i was covered with itchy red spots and i was bedridden, and i was staying at home, out of school for a week or two. i'm thinking that this might have been early in the year, 1962. it wasn't spring or summer; i don't remember any great feeling of missing out on good weather.
so i was lying in bed (and for some reason my sickbed was in Wendy's old bedroom, Wendy, my adored younger sister who had died following open heart surgery, not that many months before my father died. i'm not clear in my memory why i was in that bedroom, not much bigger than a closet, with its built-in narrow bed, and not in my own bedroom, the middle room, a much larger room) but anyway, there i was. i had my Jimmy Dean record and i had this RCA 45 turntable (which had been made right there, in my hometown, Cambridge, Ohio; this was before all the consumer electronics production moved to Japan) and i had my "Big Bad John" record, and i put the record on the turntable and i played it, and i played it, and i played it, over and over and over. when the needle got to the end of the record the tone arm came up and went back to the beginning and the record started again. automatically. i didn't have to do anything except lie there in my sickbed and listen, over and over and over again.
do i need to explain myself? probably not, but i will anyway. i'm sick, my father's dead, i'm feeling sorry for myself, i'm a wimpy kid (though i was bigger than most of my classmates) who's too smart and too brooding for his own good. and along comes this other John, this Big Bad John, this mountain of a man who kills another man with his "huge right hand," over a Cajun Queen, kills him effortlessly, the way you or i might swat a fly. "everybody knew, ya didn't give no lip to Big John" --- that was the John i wanted to be.
of course, in the end Big John saves the day when the mine shaft collapses. he dies a hero's death. he gets the sorrow and the pity, but he gets the adulation too. he's gone, but he's gone to glory. and he got the girl, somewhere along the line, and now he's left her sad and lonely. really, he has everything a man could want.
so now when i look at this photograph, this forgotten moment from somebody else's life, found by me somewhere in a place i've forgotten, i look at it as a little serendipitous gift, my past coming to me with an offering, saying "here, take heart, be grateful. time passes, wounds heal, sorrows melt away." we're left with our memories. and looked at in the right way, those memories don't just leave us looking backwards. they shine a light on the future, and show us the way forward. looked at correctly, what the past says is nothing so much as "go on, get a move on, there's still work to be done. no time for feeling sorry for yourself."
well, at least, that's what my Jimmy Dean story says to me.
Snapshot: The Real Jimmy Dean (Or One Hell Of A Jimmy Dean Impersonator) And Some Anonymous Woman
i suppose i could have found a snapshot of any number of country & western performers, and it's just happenstance that the one i found featured Jimmy Dean. i suppose there's nothing providential about it all. coincidence, the statisticians tell us, is just that, coincidence. nothing more.
but there's no country singer i have a more personal relationship with than Jimmy Dean. well, i did meet Sleepy Labeef one time. in fact, i sat around a table and Sleepy told stories, and they were wonderful stories, and Sleepy was quite a fellow, but Sleepy's more of a rockabilly guy anyway, and, whatever, i've still got to put Jimmy Dean first, though i've never actually met Jimmy Dean in the flesh. or might have met --- he's dead now, since 2010. but anyway, here's my Jimmy Dean story.
"Big Bad John" was Jimmy Dean's greatest all-time hit, and it's probably the way a lot of people heard of him first. nowadays, of course, his brand of sausage may be his # 1 claim to fame, and there may be people who have never even heard of "Big Bad John," and eat Jimmy Dean sausage everyday. but anyway, that's where i heard of Jimmy Dean first, on that "Big Bad John" record, and that's the way i'll always think of him.
the record came out in September, 1961. in October, 1961, my father committed suicide. i don't know whether i had already purchased the record before my father killed himself, or when, but anyway, i found myself in possession of the 45 rpm of what became a # 1 hit. i can imagine myself going uptown to Woolworth's and buying the record, but it's possible that someone had felt sorry for me and had bought it for me. who knows. those were pretty bleak times in my life, even before my father died. and listening to records was always a way to escape, i suppose, though i never have thought about it much.
so I had the record, and my father was dead, and then at some point i got the measles. it could have been the chicken pox. i had them both at some point in my childhood. i doubt if my mother remembers which one it was.
anyway, i was sick and i was covered with itchy red spots and i was bedridden, and i was staying at home, out of school for a week or two. i'm thinking that this might have been early in the year, 1962. it wasn't spring or summer; i don't remember any great feeling of missing out on good weather.
so i was lying in bed (and for some reason my sickbed was in Wendy's old bedroom, Wendy, my adored younger sister who had died following open heart surgery, not that many months before my father died. i'm not clear in my memory why i was in that bedroom, not much bigger than a closet, with its built-in narrow bed, and not in my own bedroom, the middle room, a much larger room) but anyway, there i was. i had my Jimmy Dean record and i had this RCA 45 turntable (which had been made right there, in my hometown, Cambridge, Ohio; this was before all the consumer electronics production moved to Japan) and i had my "Big Bad John" record, and i put the record on the turntable and i played it, and i played it, and i played it, over and over and over. when the needle got to the end of the record the tone arm came up and went back to the beginning and the record started again. automatically. i didn't have to do anything except lie there in my sickbed and listen, over and over and over again.
do i need to explain myself? probably not, but i will anyway. i'm sick, my father's dead, i'm feeling sorry for myself, i'm a wimpy kid (though i was bigger than most of my classmates) who's too smart and too brooding for his own good. and along comes this other John, this Big Bad John, this mountain of a man who kills another man with his "huge right hand," over a Cajun Queen, kills him effortlessly, the way you or i might swat a fly. "everybody knew, ya didn't give no lip to Big John" --- that was the John i wanted to be.
of course, in the end Big John saves the day when the mine shaft collapses. he dies a hero's death. he gets the sorrow and the pity, but he gets the adulation too. he's gone, but he's gone to glory. and he got the girl, somewhere along the line, and now he's left her sad and lonely. really, he has everything a man could want.
so now when i look at this photograph, this forgotten moment from somebody else's life, found by me somewhere in a place i've forgotten, i look at it as a little serendipitous gift, my past coming to me with an offering, saying "here, take heart, be grateful. time passes, wounds heal, sorrows melt away." we're left with our memories. and looked at in the right way, those memories don't just leave us looking backwards. they shine a light on the future, and show us the way forward. looked at correctly, what the past says is nothing so much as "go on, get a move on, there's still work to be done. no time for feeling sorry for yourself."
well, at least, that's what my Jimmy Dean story says to me.