Country singer Jimmy Dean founded a pork sausage company with his brother in
1969. But to most people, there was nothing special about Jimmy's
sage-flavored pork sausage than the sausage of some other manufacturers. So
Jimmy tried renaming his "Pure Pork Sausage." to "Jimmy Dean Sausage."
It was a great lesson in the power of branding.
A few years late, CBS picked up his local TY
show in which Jimmy helped launch the careers of other country
notables like Patsy Cline, Roy Clark and Roger Miller and made it a national
show which was eventually retitled The Jimmy Dean Show . The show was
a super hit and Jimmy started making humorous country-twanged commercials
for his piggy product and made "Jimmy Dean Sausage" a household name.
Sales soared even higher when Jimmy made his
country crossover hit "Big Bad John" in 1961 which he co wrote with country
singer/fiddler Roy Acuff. It went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and
earned Jimmy the 1962 Grammy Award for Best Country & Western
Recording. and served as the basis for a 1990 TV movie of the same title
starring Jimmy. The Democratic National Committee later parodied the
song in an ad that targeted presidential candidate John McCain. The ad
dubbed McCain "Exxon John" while highlighting $2 million in contributions by
Exxon-Mobil to McCain's campaign, as well as the alleged role of Big Oil
lobbyists in his campaign
Meanwhile his sausage sales were booming and he decided to sell his sausage
company in 1961 to Consolidated Foods, later renamed the Sara Lee
Corporation, and remained involved in managing the company. But the
Sara Lee management considered Jimmy too old to continue to be the company
spokesman's for Jimmy Dean Sausage and began phasing him out.
So to celebrate Jimmy's birthday, we suggest whipping up your own
facsimile batch of Jimmy Dean sausage since Sarah Lee changed their
sausage from a 16 oz package to a 12 oz package and kept the price the same,
and be sure to watch Diamonds Are Forever while munching on these
tasty balls.
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