Many country music artists can take credit for helping to broaden the genre's popularity. That list includes (but is not limited to) Johnny Cash and Glen Campbell in the 1960s, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton in the 1970s, and most recently Garth Brooks and Shania Twain. But perhaps the one artist who first brought country music before a widespread audience is Jimmy Dean. Dean, the Plainview, Texas native best known for his 1961 No. 1 hit, "Big Bad John" and giving us sausage to eat at breakfast, hosted a number of eponymously-named network series in the 1950s and 1960s. His first television exposure came in 1957, when he had a self-titled daily CBS series that was based in Washington. He also had a primetime series that ran during the summer of '57 and featured primarily country talent and older popular acts. The daytime series ran from April to December 1957, and again from September 1958 to June 1959.
