Little Jimmy Dickens Dies at Age 94

Although he stood less than 5 feet tall, country music lost a giant when longtime Grand Ole Opry star Little Jimmy Dickens died Friday (Jan. 2) at a Nashville-area hospital at age 94. A master showman and a fan favorite at the Opry, the Country Music Hall of Fame member made his final Opry appearance on Dec. 20. A diminutive bundle of energy in his 1950s and 1960s heyday, Dickens wowed country fans with a pleasing mix of his tiny size and an incongruous gum-popping swagger. Also known for his self-deprecating humor, he often called himself “Willie Nelson after taxes” and pretended to have overheard a fan describe him as “Mighty Mouse in pajamas.” His best records featured a hot group of talented pickers in and around his Country Boys band, such as Jabbo Arrington, Thumbs Carlille, Spider Wilson, Howard Rhoton, Walter Haynes, Buddy Harman and Buddy Emmons. Famous for classic comedy novelties like “A-Sleeping at the Foot of the Bed” and “Out Behind the Barn,” Dickens sang with incomparable heart such love ballads as “We Could,” “I’m Making Love to a Stranger,” “Another Bridge to Burn” and “Life Turned Her That Way.” Born James Cecil Dickens on Dec. 19, 1920, in the small community of Bolt, West Virginia, he was the oldest of 13 children, and within his extended family was a good share of music-loving and music-making coalminers. On radio, he heard a more professional brand of music. By his teen years, Dickens was playing guitar and singing. He first got paid to sing at WJLS in Beckley, West Virginia, in 1938, two years before his high school graduation. In the company there of such future country legends as the Bailes Brothers and Molly O’Day, Dickens moved on to Fairmont, West Virginia, and worked with yet another great, T. Texas Tyler. After high school graduation, he followed Tyler to Indianapolis, where the former “Jimmie the Kid” was first called “Little Jimmy Dickens.” In 1945, Dickens took solo work at WLW in Cincinnati, where a last growth spurt at age 24 brought him to his final height of 4 feet 11 inches. Following a year’s stint in Cincinnati, Dickens headed to Topeka, Kansas, and continued working as a single performer. In 1947, his next stop was Saginaw, Michigan, where he put his first band together. Former Grand Ole Opry network radio host Roy Acuff came through Saginaw on tour and was so impressed with Dickens’ talent and showmanship that he offered to help him find work on Nashville’s WSM and the Opry, a move Dickens made in 1948 (actually living with Acuff during and after the music veteran’s unsuccessful gubernatorial race that year). In August 1948, Dickens became an Opry member following work on WSM and several Opry guest appearances, and his first recordings were for Acuff’s label, Columbia, in January 1949. That year, he scored two career-building hits, “Take an Old Cold ‘Tater (and Wait)” and Boudleaux Bryant’s “Country Boy,” the former supplying his own nickname of “Tater” (given him by Hank Williams) and the latter naming his new band, the Country Boys, which he formed that summer. Soon Dickens was one of the Opry’s most beloved and entertaining acts and one of the field’s busiest road warriors, for years racking up tours of some 200-plus days out and more than 200,000 miles. Even without a lot of charted hits in the years just ahead, his showmanship was the envy of bigger hit-makers, and his band’s musicianship became the goal or target for many aspiring rural musicians. Dickens was one of the first stars whose band released instrumentals in their own right, such as “Buddy’s Boogie,” “Red Wing,” Raisin’ the Dickens” and “Country Boy Bounce,” released on Columbia singles or LPs in the mid-1950s...more