Jimmy Dean, 1928–2010

The country star who got rich on sausage

He was a singer, songwriter, actor, and country music legend, but Jimmy Dean wasn’t content just to make music. In his spare time, Dean was also an early television pioneer and an entrepreneur who launched his own successful breakfast sausage company. “He had a lot of talents,” said his wife, Donna Meade Dean.

Born Seth Ward in Olton, Texas, Dean grew up poor in nearby Plainview. “His mother taught him how to play piano at age 10,” said MTV.com, “and along the way he picked up guitar, harmonica, and accordion, dropping out of school in the ninth grade.” Dean was stationed at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, D.C., in the 1940s. After leaving the Air Force in 1948, he and his band, the Texas Wildcats, developed a following in the Washington market, playing in taverns and appearing on local radio programs.

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“As his music career began to wind down, Dean returned to the thing he knew best: hog,” said MTV.com. Dean, who had grown up grinding pork on his family’s farm, opened the Jimmy Dean Meat Co. in Plainview in 1969, and his sausage became a breakfast staple from coast to coast. He sold the company to the Sara Lee Corp. in 1984, and by the early 1990s Dean’s fortune was estimated at $75 million. Dean, who died on his 200-acre estate in Virginia, had vowed never to “get old and broke” like other musicians he’d known. No one, he said, is “going to play a benefit for Jimmy Dean.”