The Story Behind The Song…………………..”Big Bad John” – Jimmy Dean (#1 country, #1 pop, 1961) In the early sixties, Jimmy Dean was primarily known as a television performer, not a hit-maker. He had started out hosting a local, country music television show in the Washington, D. C. market. Among the performers who got their first big break on Dean’s program were future Country Music Hall of Fame members Patsy Cline and Roy Clark (whom Dean ended up having to fire because of Clark’s habitual tardiness). A few years later, Dean found himself based in New York, hosting a program for the CBS Television Network called “The Morning Show.” Unfortunately, not being on the level of NBC’s “Today Show,” Dean’s program was cancelled after only nine months, but CBS kept him on their staff. The network changed the name of his program to “The Jimmy Dean Show,” revamped the format and moved it to weekday afternoons and Saturdays. All the while he was a TV host, Jimmy had also been making records for CBS’s recording branch, Columbia Records (signing to the label in 1957). He had released about ten singles, but they hadn’t really gone anywhere. His one lone top five country hit had come way back in 1953, called “Bummin’ Around” on the 4 Star label, but he hadn’t appeared on Billboard’s country chart since (although his name did show up in the lower rungs of the pop listings every once in a while). Dean usually recorded in Columbia’s New York studios with Mitch Miller producing, and rarely did sessions in Nashville, but during one particular recording assignment to Music City, his career took a dramatic turn upward. The general routine at Nashville sessions in those days was to complete four songs in three hours (enough for two 45 rpm records). That included working up the arrangements, figuring out each musician’s part, going through the song one or two times, then stepping up to the mic and delivering the goods live with the featured artist and all the players together. It was just “go in there and do it.” Needless to say, this method took an abundance of talent from everyone involved. Nowadays, in some cases, it takes weeks to make one just one recording, with multiple overdubs and layer upon layer of instrumentation. Dean was on the flight to Nashville for his assigned recording session with just three songs prepared. He needed one more for a “B” side. As Jimmy sat there on the plane thinking about what he might do, he came up with an idea. A few months earlier in New York, he’d had his first acting experience working in a play, a summer stock production of “Destry Rides Again,” based on the 1939 movie which had starred Jimmy Stewart. It was there that Dean met and worked with an actor named John Mento, a very large man, burly and extremely tall, who dwarfed just about everyone in the play. Whenever Jimmy would pass Mento on the set, he’d address him as “Big Johhnn.” Dean thought it had a nice ring to it, so during the hour-and-a-half flight from New York to the session in Nashville, he decided to write a story around his actor friend, lyrically putting him in a mine and killing him. Jimmy looked around for some paper to write on, but all he could find was some sort of certificate issued by American Arlines. So on the back of the certificate, Dean wrote “Big Bad John.” He recorded the song as he read it from that original manuscript. The session took place at the famed “Quonset Hut” studio, owned by Owen Bradley. By this time (1961), Columbia already had been leasing the studio for a number of years for sessions for the label’s stable of artists. Bradley sold it to Columbia outright the following year and it became “Columbia Studio B.” The session out of which came “Big Bad John” began with the legendary A-Team guitarist Grady Martin assisting Dean on the arrangement. Grady not only played on the record, but also had a music publishing company in Nashville at the time. In return for Martin’s help with the arrangement, Dean gave him the publishing rights to the song. At the helm was Columbia’s most prolific Nashville-based producer Don Law, backed up not only by Grady’s reliably fabulous guitar work, but also with “Lightning” Chance on bass and Buddy Harman on drums, plus background vocals by The Jordanaires. However, the most memorable musician on the recording was by far Dean’s old friend, the marvelous piano player Floyd Cramer, who wound up not playing piano at all that day. During rehearsal of the song, Floyd turned to Don Law and said, “Don, you don’t need me to play piano on this song; I’d just be playing the same notes as the background vocalists.” Then, an obvious idea hit him. Floyd reached over and picked up a chunk of steel generally used as ballast for a TV camera, tied a coat hanger around it and hung it on a coatrack. Somewhere in the studio, he found a hammer and began to strike the chunk of steel, obviously looking for the sound of a miner’s pick. He then pulled a microphone over to it and told the engineer to put some echo on it. Cramer worked magic that day, and the sound effect he created became a very important part of “Big Bad John’s” success. Of course, there used to be a lot of that creative thinking and ability in Nashville, and Don Law got quite a bit of credit for being a genius. But the truth of it is, he was smart enough to let the musicians do what they knew how to do. He knew he had a bunch of creative people, and he let them create. Floyd Cramer was indeed one of the best, and it’s a safe bet that it was the first and last time that one of the greatest pianists in the world ever played hammer on a record. Earlier that same year, Law received kudos for creating a new type of guitar sound on Marty Robbins’ #1 hit “Don’t Worry,” but actually, it was a blown amp in the mixing board that caused Grady Martin’s guitar to distort, creating the “fuzz-tone” sound that other producers and musicians tried to re-create for years afterward. In reality, it was a total accident, which Law and Robbins decided to leave on the finished record (reportedly, Grady wanted to re-cut it). Upon its release in the fall of ’61, “Big Bad John” sailed effortlessly (in just three weeks) to the top of both Billboard’s country chart and Billboard’s Hot 100 pop chart. It was actually a bigger pop hit, resting at the summit for five weeks there, while holding the #1 slot for only two weeks on the country playlists. Any way you slice it though, it was a monster record. Dean didn’t realize just how massive it was until one day he was driving into New York City in his purple ’57 Oldsmobile convertible, and “Big Bad John” came on the radio while Jimmy was crossing the George Washington Bridge. Never wanting to hear himself sing, he reached over to change the radio to another station and there it was again! And before he could get across the bridge, he turned the dial again and heard it playing on a third station! After the incredible success of “Big Bad John,” Dean wanted to do something special for the man who had inspired the song, his actor friend John Mento, so Jimmy set up an appointment with his tailor so “Big John” could go in and be fitted for a brand new suit, reportedly the biggest one Jimmy’s tailor had ever worked on. Not bad for a fellow who merely had a catchy name and happened to be several inches taller than anyone around. Dean admittedly didn’t think very much of the song “Big Bad John” when he scribbled the words to it on the back of the American Airlines certificate during the flight to Nashville that day, but to date, it has sold a little over eight million copies. A fair tally for what was supposed to be the “B” side of a record. An amazing footnote to the “Big Bad John” story is that Jimmy Dean’s contract with Columbia Records had expired before he recorded the song. No one had realized it, including Dean himself. The expiration had somehow slipped through the cracks of Columbia’s legal department. A classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing. Of course, with Jimmy now having the hottest record in the country, the matter of renegotiating his contract would be considerably different than before, and Dean ended up with a particularly lucrative new deal. Another bit of trivia about “Big Bad John” is that there were two different endings to the song. In 1961, modesty and decency had to be used in the content of records, movies, TV shows, etc. (unlike now, when anything and everything can be said or shown). Well, the original ending that Dean had written was, “At the bottom of this mine lies one hell of a man, Big John,” and that’s how Jimmy recorded it. The record was released that way and about twenty-five thousand copies had already been sold when Columbia decided to stop the presses and have Jimmy go in and change it, thinking the word “hell” was too risqué. The label’s executives ordered Dean to Columbia’s New York studio to replace the spoken-word ending with, “At the bottom of this mine lies a big, big man.” Jimmy considered it odd that the change was ordered, because he had already said the word “hell” early on in the song, as in “man-made hell.” But that didn’t bother them, only the ending. Reportedly, the original ending was released just on the earliest of the 45 rpm pressings, and supposedly was never issued on an album, although I do personally remember hearing this ending several times over the years, and I doubt that I was listening to an original 45. “Big Bad John” won several accolades for Jimmy Dean, including “Most Popular Juke Box Record of the Year” from the Music Operators of America. Jimmy acquired a “gold record” award from Broadcast Music Inc. The song was also nominated for four 1961 Grammy awards: Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Male Vocal Performance and Best Country and Western Recording of the Year, winning in the latter category. “Big Bad John” also opened many doors for Dean, allowing him to perform at the London Palladium, The Hollywood Bowl, on television’s “Ed Sullivan Show,” and as a guest-host on Jack Paar’s “Tonight Show,” where he reconciled with one of his guests that night, Roy Clark, whom he had fired from his Washington, D. C. television show all those years ago. After their reconciliation, they remained friends until Jimmy’s death on June 13, 2010. At the time of his passing, it had been announced back in February that Dean had been selected to become a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame later that fall. Unfortunately, he didn’t live to attend the official induction ceremony. In an interview right after the announcement was made, a reporter asked him how he felt about being inducted into the Hall of Fame, and Jimmy quipped, “I thought I was already in there!” – JH youtu.be/RN3exiuyQJc
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 00:44:58 +0000
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