Lil Jimmy Dickens, jocular star of Grand Ole Opry dies at 94

Little Jimmy Dickens, the diminutive country singer and Grand Ole Opry star best known for his humorous novelty songs, such as “May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose,” died Jan. 2 at a hospital near Nashville. He was 94.

The Opry announced the death and said the cause was cardiac arrest.

Mr. Dickens, who stood 4-foot-11, was known as “the little man with the big voice.” He endeared himself to country audiences with his jovial personality, rhinestone-studded suits and a crackerjack band that included some of the finest session players in Nashville.

Mr. Dickens’s size became a running joke in his performances. As the youngest of 13 children born to a West Virginia farmer, he called himself the “runt of the litter.” He liked to quote a woman who saw him play: “Came to see Little Jimmy Dickens, but all I saw was Mighty Mouse in his pajamas.”

Mr. Dickens placed 13 hits in the Billboard Top 40 country charts between 1949 and 1967. He specialized in novelty songs, including “Take an Old Cold Tater (and Wait)” (1949) and “A-Sleepin’ at the Foot of the Bed” (1950), which made light of his hardscrabble rural childhood and small size. The country entertainer Hank Williams nicknamed him “Tater” after the hit record.

Another Dickens song proclaimed “I’m Little But I’m Loud” (1950) — not an idle boast as he could project his voice to the back of any auditorium. Indeed, his 1983 induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame noted that his “big voice and brassy style made him a longtime favorite with country fans.”

One of his biggest hits was “May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose” (1965), which was briefly No. 1 on the country charts and No. 15 on the pop charts. His 1963 recording of the ballad “Another Bridge to Burn” became a honky-tonk standard.

“His appeal is his consistency, his mastery of the stage and the wide variety of song material,” John Rumble, senior historian at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, told The Washington Post. “He is very folksy and speaks to the audience in very colorful, realistic language.”

The relentless drive of Mr. Dickens’s band, the Country Boys, on such 1950s recordings as “Hillbilly Fever” and “Salty Boogie” anticipated the style later known as rockabilly. The group’s alumni included pedal steel guitarists Curly Chalker and Buddy Emmons and lead guitarists Grady Martin and Kenneth “Thumbs” Carllile — all later members of the so-called Nashville A-Team of session players.

Mr. Dickens continued to tour and appear on the Nashville-based Opry throughout the last decade, and he did a comedy skit on the 2011 Country Music Awards dressed as adolescent pop idol “Little” Justin Bieber.

In later years, his shtick included quips about growing older. He told audiences, “You know you’re 88 when your wife says, ‘Let’s run upstairs and make love,’ and you say, ‘I can’t do both.’ ”

James Cecil Dickens was born Dec. 19, 1920, on a farm in Bolt, W.Va. He studied dramatic arts at West Virginia University in Morgantown and became a radio announcer as a teenager.

One of his first jobs was to do a morning sign-on for a station in Beckley, W.Va., by crowing like a rooster. From that less-than-auspicious start, he began appearing regularly on radio programs throughout the Midwest.

In 1947, the country singer Roy Acuff heard him on a station in Cincinnati and was impressed. He smoothed Mr. Dickens’s way onto the Opry stage and a Columbia Records recording studio. Mr. Dickens proved to be an immediate success.

He left the Opry to join the touring Philip Morris Country Music Show in 1957 but returned about two decades later.

His first marriage, to Connie Dickens, ended in divorce. His second wife, Ernestine Jones, died in a car accident in 1968. Survivors include his third wife, Mona Dickens. A complete list of survivors could not be confirmed immediately.

On the eve of his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame, Mr. Dickens reflected on his enduring popularity.

“I’ve always tried to treat audiences right and the people right and to get on their level and visit with them,” he told the Associated Press. “I never actually looked at my people who came to see me as fans but as friends helping me out, and I tried to treat them that way.”
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