Jimmy Swan

Who was Jimmy Swan?

Jimmy Swan was an American country musician.

Swan came from a rural Alabama farming family; his father abandoned the family when Swan was very young, and he was brought up in Birmingham. His mother died in the late 1920s, and he was destitute for most of his teenage years. At age 15, he won a talent show at an Alabama radio station, but didn't make anything of it at first. He married at age 17 and quickly had several children, and was unable to put together a band until the beginning of the 1940s. Later in his musical career he met Hank Locklin, and had Hank Williams play with him at various venues across Mississippi and Louisiana.

He moved to Hattiesburg, Mississippi and worked in local radio as well as the honky tonk circuit. Disappointed with the drunken, violent lifestyle of honky tonk bars, he quit music to become a disc jockey in 1948, returning only in 1952 after an offer from Trumpet Records. Swan saw success with "I Had a Dream" and "The Last Letter", the latter a tribute to Hank Williams, who had died in 1953.