Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
On this date ...
1961: "Big Bad John," the coal miner's anthem written by Jimmy Dean and Roy Acuff, had been released and was headed to the top of the Billboard charts.
It begins:
"Every morning at the mine you could see him arrive
"He stood 6-foot-6 and weighed 245
"Kinda broad at the shoulder and narrow at the hip
"Everybody knew, you didn't give no lip to Big John."
When the mine collapses, Dean - a Plainview native who later becomes famous for his sausage company - sings about Big John's heroic efforts to save his co-workers, lifting a sagging timber:
"Twenty men scrambled from a would-be grave
"Now there's only one left down there to save, Big John."
The miners of the song joined together "with jacks and timbers and started back down," to try to save John. But then "smoke and gas belched out of that mine. ... And everybody knew it was the end of the line, for Big John."
The song concluded:
"They never reopened that worthless pit
"They just placed a marble stand in front of it
"These few words are written on that stand
'"At the bottom of this mine lies a big, big man, Big John."'
Dean died in 2010. The epitaph where he's entombed features a line from the uncensored version of the anthem:
"Here lies one hell of a man."
Pages Past is compiled by David Stevens. Contact him at:
