Jimmy Boyd
Jimmy Boyd (born January 9, 1939) is an American singer, musician, and actor.
He was born in an old farmhouse in McComb, Mississippi. In 1941 his father Leslie Boyd put his wife Winnie, their two sons Kenneth four years old, and Jimmy two years old on a train bound for Riverside, California. Having sold everything they owned, and only having enough money for his wife's ticket and the two toddler boys, Leslie rode the rails. He hitchhiked on freight trains to join his family in California, something he had done growing up through the Depression. Hoboing from Mississippi, Louisiana and as far as West Texas, picking cotton to help support his own family of twenty-one brothers and sisters. The family after being sent back to Mississippi a year earlier by the Welfare Department for not having any skills to get a good job. Leslie had been a farmer when the draught hit and there were no more crops, he picked cotton, he could pick over five hundred pounds of cotton a day himself, and was paid twenty five cents. Although there was no cotton in California to pick, this time they were determined to stay. Leslie got a meanial job cleaning up construction sites.
Leslie and Winnie ocassionaly took the kids with them to a Country and Western dance, held in a barn in Colton, California a few miles from Riverside. Jimmy's older brother Kenneth, about nine years old at the time, went up to the bandstand and told the band leader he should hear his little brother sing and play the guitar. Texas Jim Lewis, the band leader, called little Jimmy up on the stage. Jimmy sang and played and the crowd went wild. After the dance was over, Texas Jim Lewis and the manager of a local radio station came to Jimmy's parents and asked if he could come sing every Saturday night, and be a part of the hour long radio show they planned to broadcast from the dance. They offered to pay Jimmy fifty dollars every show. Fifty dollars was a lot of money for the Boyds, but Jimmy enjoyed performing and would have done it for nothing.
Leslie had cataracts in both eyes and had to have surgery. Cataract surgery in the forties was a serious operation, and had to be done in Los Angeles. While in L.A. they were told about auditions being held for the Al Jarvis Talent Show on KLAC-TV. Jimmy auditioned for Al Jarvis and was such a hit they put him on the show that night. Jimmy to his astonishment won the talent show, and the next day Al Jarvis and KLAC were literally deluged in telegrams and telephone calls from viewers. Upwards of twenty thousand telegrams and phone calls.
Al Jarvis had a five hour talk show everyday on KLAC with a few regulars on it, including Betty White, called "Make Believe Ballroom". Jarvis immediately announced Jimmy would be a regular on the show. The Frank Sinatra Show CBS soon followed, then Columbia Records and "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus", which to date has sold over sixty million records.
Between February of 1953 and November of 1954, he made five appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show. Boyd would record several number one records: teaming up with Frankie Laine on "Tell Me A Story" and with Rosemary Clooney on "Dennis The Menace." Boyd showed he had comedic talents in TV series including, "Bachelor Father", "Date With The Angels", "Betty White Show", "Broadside", "My Three Sons" and others. He also appeared in a number of motion pictures, including 1960's Inherit the Wind with Spencer Tracy.
For his contribution to the recording industry, Jimmy Boyd has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7021 Hollywood Blvd.
External links
- Jimmy Boyd at IMDb