This article is about Jimmy Dean, singer, television performer, and sausage entepreneur. You might be looking for James Dean

Jimmy Dean (born August 10, 1928), born Seth Ward in Plainview, Texas, became a professional entertainer after a stint in the U.S. Air Force in the late 1940s. He became the host of the popular Washington D.C. TV program Town and Country Time and, with his Texas Wildcats, became favorites in the region. Both Patsy Cline and Roy Clark got their starts with Dean, who fired Clark, his lead guitarist, for chronic lateness. He had his first hit, "Bummin' Around," in 1953.

Dean went on to New York in the 1950s where he hosted another TV variety show for CBS and signed with Columbia Records. He became best known there for his songs "Big Bad John" and "PT 109", the latter in honor of PT-109 and John F. Kennedy. In the early 1960s he also hosted the Tonight Show on occasion and one night introduced Roy Clark, with whom he'd remained friendly, to a wider audience, something that helped Clark enhance his career.

His mid-1960s ABC TV variety show was one of the first to present country music entertainers with dignity and class, on their terms. Roger Miller, George Jones, Charlie Rich, Buck Owens and others got some of their first network TV exposure on the Dean show, also best remembered for his regular sketches with one of Jim Henson's long running muppet, Rowlf the Dog.

When the show ended, he began to dabble in acting in the late 1960s, with his best-known role being that of millionaire Willard Whyte in the 1971 James Bond movie, Diamonds Are Forever. Dean also performed around the country and around 1969 founded the Jimmy Dean Sausage brand originally called "Pure Pork Sausage."

Despite ups and downs (some revolving around his problems with his partner-brother Don Dean), the Jimmy Dean Sausage company did well, in part due to Dean's own extemporized, good-humored commercials. Its success led to its acquisition by Consolidated Foods, later renamed the Sara Lee Corporation. Over time, Dean remained involved in running the company, though they eventually began phasing him out of any management duties, a traumatic period that took a toll on his health.

In January 2004, Dean said that the company Sara Lee had dropped him as the spokesman for the sausage brand. In the fall of 2004, he released his blunt, straight-talking autobiography, 30 Years of Sausage, 50 Years of Ham. Today, Dean lives in semiretirement with second wife Donna Meade Dean, a former singer who helped him write his book.