"Big Bad John" is a country song originally performed by Jimmy Dean, who wrote and composed in collaboration with Roy Acuff. Released in September 1961, by the beginning of November it went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and won Dean the 1962 Grammy Award for Best Country & Western Recording. The song and its sequels tell a story typical of American folklore, reminiscent of Paul Bunyan or John Henry. Big Bad John was also the title of a 1990 television movie starring Dean.

The song tells the story of a mysterious and quiet miner who earned the nickname Big John because of his height, weight, and muscular physique. ("He stood six foot six and weighed two forty-five.") He supposedly came from New Orleans, where he allegedly killed a man over a Cajun Queen.

One day, a support timber cracked at the mine where John worked. The situation looked hopeless until John "grabbed a saggin' timber, gave out with a groan / and like a giant oak tree just stood there alone," then "gave a mighty shove," opening a passage and allowing the 20 other miners to escape the mine. Just as the other miners were about to re-enter the mine with the tools necessary to save him, the mine fully collapsed and John was believed to have died in the depths of the mine. The mine itself was never reopened, but a marble stand was placed in front of it, with the words "At the bottom of this mine lies one hell of a man – Big John." (Some versions of the song change the last line to "lies a big, big man" to replace what was at the time considered to be borderline profane language.)

Its 1962 sequel, "The Cajun Queen," describes the arrival of "Queenie," Big John's Cajun Queen, who rescues John from the mine and marries him. Eventually, they have "a hundred and ten grandchildren." The sequel's events are more exaggerated than the first, extending the story into the realm of tall tales.

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