The Jimmy Dean Show
Encyclopedia
The Jimmy Dean Show is the name of several similar music and variety series
on American local and network television between 1957–75. Each starred country music
singer Jimmy Dean
as host.
in Washington, DC in early 1957. It was picked up by the CBS-TV network from April 8–December 13, 1957 under the name The Morning Show from 7–7:45 a.m. ET Monday–Friday (CBS News provided a newscast from 7:45–8 a.m.). Guests included Chet Atkins
, Billy Walker
, Little Jimmy Dickens
, George Hamilton IV
, and the Country Lads; Mary Klick was a regular. The producer was Connie B. Gay.
CBS then carried The Jimmy Dean Show on its daytime schedule from September 14, 1958–June 1959 from New York, airing from 2–2:30 p.m. ET Monday–Saturday. Guests on the variety program included Hans Conried
and Jaye P. Morgan
.
, Jim Reeves
, the Andrews Sisters and Gene Austin
.
The Jimmy Dean Show is also an hour-long weekly series carried by ABC-TV
for three seasons from September 19, 1963–April 1, 1966 from New York. Although the variety program featured country performers such as Charlie Rich
and Roger Miller
, more popular music
artists appeared. Guests included Eddy Arnold
, Connie Smith
, Vikki Carr
, Buck Owens
, Jim Reeves
, Red Buttons, Johnny Cash, Edie Gorme, Carl Smith
, Jerry Vale
, Gene Pitney
, The Four Seasons, Patty Duke
, Bobby Rydell
and SSgt. Barry Sadler
. Molly Bee
was a regular, and comics Jackie Mason
, Don Adams
and Dick Shawn
appeared. The show included Dean's duets with Rowlf the Dog
, a piano-playing Muppet, one of the first national television appearances by a creation of puppeteer Jim Henson
. On the show's 1963 premier, Dean interacted with an animated Fred Flintstone
. The series began in black-and-white but switched to color for the fall 1965 season. Executive producer was Bob Banner.
On October 14, 1966, the program videotaped the Country Music Hall of Fame inductions from the Ryman Auditorium
in Nashville, Tennessee
of Eddy Arnold, Uncle Dave Macon
, Grand Ole Opry founder George D. Hay
and music publisher Jim Denny
. The program aired October 22.
to stations from 1973–75.
Variety show
A variety show, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is an entertainment made up of a variety of acts, especially musical performances and sketch comedy, and normally introduced by a compère or host. Other types of acts include magic, animal and circus acts, acrobatics, juggling...
on American local and network television between 1957–75. Each starred country music
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
singer Jimmy Dean
Jimmy Dean
Jimmy Ray Dean was an American country music singer, television host, actor and businessman. Although he may be best known today as the creator of the Jimmy Dean sausage brand, he became a national television personality starting in 1957, rising to fame for his 1961 country crossover hit "Big Bad...
as host.
Daytime
The Jimmy Dean Show, initially called Country Style, aired live on WTOP-TVWUSA (TV)
WUSA is a television station broadcasting on channel 9 in Washington, D.C.. Owned by the Gannett Company, WUSA is an affiliate of the CBS television network, and the longest-tenured affiliate of that network...
in Washington, DC in early 1957. It was picked up by the CBS-TV network from April 8–December 13, 1957 under the name The Morning Show from 7–7:45 a.m. ET Monday–Friday (CBS News provided a newscast from 7:45–8 a.m.). Guests included Chet Atkins
Chet Atkins
Chester Burton Atkins , known as Chet Atkins, was an American guitarist and record producer who, along with Owen Bradley, created the smoother country music style known as the Nashville sound, which expanded country's appeal to adult pop music fans as well.Atkins's picking style, inspired by Merle...
, Billy Walker
Billy Walker (musician)
William Marvin Walker , better known as Billy Walker, was an American country music singer and guitarist best-known for his 1962 hit, " Charlie's Shoes"...
, Little Jimmy Dickens
Little Jimmy Dickens
James Cecil Dickens , better known as Little Jimmy Dickens, is an American country music singer famous for his humorous novelty songs, his small size, 4'11" , and his rhinestone-studded outfits...
, George Hamilton IV
George Hamilton IV
George Hege Hamilton IV is an American country musician. He began performing in the late 1950s as a teen idol, later switching to country music in the early 1960s.-Biography:Hamilton was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina...
, and the Country Lads; Mary Klick was a regular. The producer was Connie B. Gay.
CBS then carried The Jimmy Dean Show on its daytime schedule from September 14, 1958–June 1959 from New York, airing from 2–2:30 p.m. ET Monday–Saturday. Guests on the variety program included Hans Conried
Hans Conried
Hans Georg Conried, Jr. was an American comedian, character actor and voice actor.-Early years:He was born on April 15, 1917 in Baltimore, Maryland to Hans Georg Conried, Sr. and Edith Beyr Gildersleeve. His mother was a descendant of Pilgrims, and his father was a Jewish immigrant from Vienna,...
and Jaye P. Morgan
Jaye P. Morgan
Mary Margaret Morgan , known professionally as Jaye P. Morgan, is a retired popular music American singer, actress and game show panelist.-Early life:...
.
Prime time
The Jimmy Dean Show aired as a live half-hour summer series from Washington, DC on CBS-TV from June 22–September 14, 1957 from 10:30–11 p.m. on Saturday nights. Guests included Johnny CashJohnny Cash
John R. "Johnny" Cash was an American singer-songwriter, actor, and author, who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century...
, Jim Reeves
Jim Reeves
James Travis Reeves , better known as Jim Reeves, was an American country and popular music singer-songwriter. With records charting from the 1950s to the 1980s, he became well-known for being a practitioner of the Nashville sound...
, the Andrews Sisters and Gene Austin
Gene Austin
Gene Austin was an American singer and songwriter, one of the first "crooners". His 1920s compositions "When My Sugar Walks Down the Street" and "The Lonesome Road" became pop and jazz standards.-Career:...
.
The Jimmy Dean Show is also an hour-long weekly series carried by ABC-TV
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
for three seasons from September 19, 1963–April 1, 1966 from New York. Although the variety program featured country performers such as Charlie Rich
Charlie Rich
Charles Rich was an American country music singer and musician. A Grammy Award winner, his eclectic-style of music was often hard to classify in a single genre, playing in the rockabilly, jazz, blues, country, and gospel genres.In the latter part of his life, Rich acquired the nickname The Silver...
and Roger Miller
Roger Miller
Roger Dean Miller was an American singer, songwriter, musician and actor, best known for his honky tonk-influenced novelty songs...
, more popular music
Popular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
artists appeared. Guests included Eddy Arnold
Eddy Arnold
Richard Edward Arnold , known professionally as Eddy Arnold, was an American country music singer who performed for six decades. He was a so-called Nashville sound innovator of the late 1950s, and scored 147 songs on the Billboard country music charts, second only to George Jones. He sold more...
, Connie Smith
Connie Smith
Connie Smith is an American country music artist. She began her career in 1963 after winning a local talent contest near Columbus, Ohio, which attracted the attention of country songwriter Bill Anderson...
, Vikki Carr
Vikki Carr
Vikki Carr is an American singer and humanitarian from El Paso, Texas. She has performed in a variety of music genres, including jazz, pop and country, but has enjoyed her greatest success singing in Spanish.-Career:After taking the stage name 'Vikki Carr', she signed with Liberty Records in 1962...
, Buck Owens
Buck Owens
Alvis Edgar Owens, Jr. , better known as Buck Owens, was an American singer and guitarist who had 21 No. 1 hits on the Billboard country music charts with his band, the Buckaroos...
, Jim Reeves
Jim Reeves
James Travis Reeves , better known as Jim Reeves, was an American country and popular music singer-songwriter. With records charting from the 1950s to the 1980s, he became well-known for being a practitioner of the Nashville sound...
, Red Buttons, Johnny Cash, Edie Gorme, Carl Smith
Carl Smith (country musician)
Carl Milton Smith was an American country music singer. Known as "Mister Country," Smith was the husband of June Carter and Goldie Hill, the drinking companion of Johnny Cash, and the father of Carlene Carter...
, Jerry Vale
Jerry Vale
Jerry Vale is an American singer.-Career:In high school, in order to make some money, he took a job shining shoes in a barbershop in New York City. He sang while he shined shoes, and his boss liked the sound so well that he paid for music lessons for the boy...
, Gene Pitney
Gene Pitney
Eugene Francis Alan Pitney, known as Gene Pitney , was an American singer-songwriter, musician and sound engineer. Through the mid-1960s, he enjoyed success as a recording artist on both sides of the Atlantic and was among the group of early 1960s American acts who continued to enjoy hits after the...
, The Four Seasons, Patty Duke
Patty Duke
Anna Marie "Patty" Duke is an American actress of stage, film, and television. First becoming famous as a child star, winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at age 16, and later starring in her eponymous sitcom for three years, she progressed to more mature roles upon playing Neely...
, Bobby Rydell
Bobby Rydell
Bobby Rydell is an American professional singer, mainly of rock and roll music. In the early 1960s he was considered a so-called "teen idol"...
and SSgt. Barry Sadler
Barry Sadler
Barry Sadler was an American soldier, author and musician. Sadler served as a Green Beret medic with the rank of Staff Sergeant in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War...
. Molly Bee
Molly Bee
Molly Bee , born Mollie Gene Beachboard, was an American country music singer famous for her 1952 recording of the early perennial, "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus", and as Pinky Lee's sidekick on The Pinky Lee Show.Bee was also well known in the 1950s in Los Angeles, California as a regular on...
was a regular, and comics Jackie Mason
Jackie Mason
Jackie Mason is an American stand-up comedian and movie actor.-Early life:Born Yacov Moshe Maza in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, he grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City....
, Don Adams
Don Adams
Don Adams was an American actor, comedian and director. In his five decades on television, he was best known as Maxwell Smart in the television situation comedy Get Smart , which he also sometimes directed and wrote. Adams won three consecutive Emmy Awards for his portrayal of Smart...
and Dick Shawn
Dick Shawn
Dick Shawn was an American actor and comedian.-Early life and career:Shawn was born as Richard Schulefand in Buffalo, New York. He played Sylvester Marcus, son of Mrs. Marcus , in Stanley Kramer's It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Lorenzo St...
appeared. The show included Dean's duets with Rowlf the Dog
Rowlf the Dog
Rowlf the Dog is a Muppet character, a scruffy brown dog of indeterminate breed with a rounded black nose and long floppy ears. He was created by Jim Henson....
, a piano-playing Muppet, one of the first national television appearances by a creation of puppeteer Jim Henson
Jim Henson
James Maury "Jim" Henson was an American puppeteer best known as the creator of The Muppets. As a puppeteer, Henson performed in various television programs, such as Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, films such as The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper, and created advanced puppets for...
. On the show's 1963 premier, Dean interacted with an animated Fred Flintstone
Fred Flintstone
Frederick Joseph “Fred” Flintstone, also known as Fred W. Flintstone or Frederick J. Flintstone, is the protagonist of the animated sitcom The Flintstones, which aired during prime-time on ABC during the original series' run from 1960-66. He is the husband of Wilma Flintstone and father of Pebbles...
. The series began in black-and-white but switched to color for the fall 1965 season. Executive producer was Bob Banner.
On October 14, 1966, the program videotaped the Country Music Hall of Fame inductions from the Ryman Auditorium
Ryman Auditorium
The Ryman Auditorium is a 2,362-seat live performance venue, located at 115 5th Avenue North, in Nashville, Tennessee and is best known as the historic home of the Grand Ole Opry....
in Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...
of Eddy Arnold, Uncle Dave Macon
Uncle Dave Macon
Uncle Dave Macon , born David Harrison Macon—also known as "The Dixie Dewdrop"—was an American banjo player, singer, songwriter, and comedian...
, Grand Ole Opry founder George D. Hay
George D. Hay
George Dewey Hay was an American radio personality. He was the founder of the original Grand Ole Opry radio program on WSM-AM in Nashville, Tennessee, from which the country music stage show of the same name evolved....
and music publisher Jim Denny
Jim Denny
Jim Denny is a retired Scottish professional football player.Denny joined Rangers in 1970 from junior side Yoker Athletic. He made his debut in the Scottish Cup final replay against Celtic on May 12, 1971...
. The program aired October 22.
ABC schedules
- September 1963–March 1964: Thursday, 9–10 p.m. Eastern Time
- March–August 1964: Thursday, 9:30–10:30 p.m. ET
- September 1964–September 1965: Thursday, 10–11 p.m. ET
- September 1965–April 1966: Friday, 10–11 p.m. ET
Syndication
The Jimmy Dean Show is also the name of a half-hour television program syndicatedTelevision syndication
In broadcasting, syndication is the sale of the right to broadcast radio shows and television shows by multiple radio stations and television stations, without going through a broadcast network, though the process of syndication may conjure up structures like those of a network itself, by its very...
to stations from 1973–75.