#19: Starlight Starbright by Jimmy Dean

City: Hull, QC
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: April 1958
Peak Position in Hull ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Starlight Starbright”
Lyrics: N/A

In 1928 Jimmy Ray Dean was born in Plainview, Texas. His mother taught him to play piano. He dropped out of high school to work to help his mother. Next he joined the U.S. Air Force. He later and a professional entertainer around the time Dean married his first wife Mary Sue (Sue) in 1950. He had his first Top Ten hit on the Billboard Country charts in 1952 called “Bumming Around.” In 1954, Jimmy Dean became the host of radio program Town and Country Time on WARL in Washington D.C. Dean and his Texas Wildcats grew in popularity across the Mid-Atlantic region. Among the singers who got their start on the show were Patsy Cline, Roy Clark and Billy Grammar. He gained more fame with several more radio shows in Maryland and Virgina. In 1957, Dean had a minor country hit titled “Little Sandy Sleightfoot”. That year Jimmy Dean released the album Jimmy Dean Sings His Television Favorites. 

From June 22 to September 14, 1957, dean hosted a half-hour show on CBS titled The Jimmy Dean Show. The show featured Rowlf the Dog.

From September 1958 to June 1959  Dean again hosted the Jimmy Dean Show on CBS. That show included a debut of a young puppeteer named Jim Henson who later created the Muppets. Rowlf the Dog was Henson’s first muppet.

In 1958, Jimmy Dean released a non-album single titled “Starlight, Starbright”.

“Starlight Starbright” was cowritten by Joe Sauter and Norman Blagman. Sauter worked on the 1964 Broadway musical Cindy.  Blagman was born in Manhattan in 1926.

“Starlight Starbright” is a riff off of a late 19th century nursery rhyme:

Starlight, starbright,
first star I see tonight,
I wish I may, I wish I might,
have the wish I wish tonight. 

The superstition of hoping for wishes granted when seeing a shooting or falling star may date back to the ancient world.

In Jimmy Dean’s song, after addressing the bright star in the sky, he sings, “you know what I’m dreaming of, send me someone to love.” It turns out his wish is prompted by his being “lonely as can be.” Part way through the upbeat song, Jimmy Dean is joined by a children’s choir to sing a chorus and a verse. Dean has “been waiting such a long, long, time” for someone to be his.

“Starlight Starbright” peaked at #1 in Hull (QC).

In September, 1961, Dean released a song about a brave miner called “Big Bad John.” The tune climbed to #1 on both the country and pop charts on Billboard, and here in Vancouver. The 1962 Grammy Award for Best Country & Western Recording went to “Big Bad John”. Later that fall he wrote “Dear Ivan”.

In 1962 Jimmy Dean had another Top Ten hit across North America called “P.T. 109” about the heroism of John F. Kennedy during World War II. He also had a double-sided Top Ten hit at the start of the year “To A Sleeping Beauty”/”The Cajun Queen” in Vancouver which made the Top 30 in America.

In the early sixties Jimmy Dean was occasionally the guest host of The Tonight Show. He also appeared on other programs including The Ed Sullivan Show and The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom. From 1963-1966 he hosted The Jimmy Dean Show on ABC. He also was an actor in 14 episodes of Daniel Boone, and in the James Bond movie, Diamonds Are Forever.  Meanwhile, though his career on the pop charts slumped, he had a second #1 hit on the country charts in 1965 titled “The First Thing Every Morning (And The Last Thing Every Night)”. From that success, Dean subsequently had a chart-topping album that year on the Billboard country & western chart titled The First Thing Ev’ry Morning. 

Dean had several more Top Ten country hits: “Stand Beside Me” (1966) and “I.O.U.” (1976). Dean also revived The Jimmy Dean Show from 1973-75.

Outside of the entertainment business, in 1969, Dean and his brother Don Dean founded the Jimmy Dean Sausage Company.  Dean’s funny commercials helped launch the business. Fifteen years later the company was acquired by Consolidated Foods, which was later renamed the Sara Lee Corporation. In 2004 he published his autobiography, 30 Years of Sausage, 50 Years of Ham. He was also inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame posthumously in 2010. He died earlier that year at the age of 81. He was entombed in a 9-foot-tall piano-shaped mausoleum overlooking the James River, Virginia, on the grounds of his estate in Varina. His epitaph reads “Here Lies One Hell of a Man”, which is a paraphrased lyric from the uncensored version of his song “Big Bad John”.

On June 24, 2014, a groundbreaking was held for the Jimmy Dean Museum, which opened two years later on the grounds of Wayland Baptist University in his hometown of Plainview, Texas.

October 16, 2024
Ray McGinnis

References:
Dean, Jimmy and Dean, Donna Meade. Thirty Years of Sausage, Fifty Years of Ham. The Berkley Publishing Group, New York, NY, 2004.

CKCH 970-AM Hull (QC) Top Ten | April 26, 1958