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This post led me down to a rabbit hole of weird songs released to capitalize on the hysteria after Dean's death. "His name was Dean," "James Dean the Greatest of All" "The Ballad of James Dean" and "Jimmy Dean's First Christmas in Heaven." "Hymn for James Dean" "A Boy Named Jimmy Dean"

'His name was Dean" is such a freaking a weird and fascinating look at an attempt to paint Dean in an almost messianic glow.

I mean first you have the often-disheveled and unkempt James Dean who wore the same shirt for weeks on end while filming Giant without washing it as: "he was so young, so bright/so clean, and his name was Dean"-so it was clear that whoever wrote this song was simply thinking of how many words he could find that would rhyme with Dean.

But the song --accompanied by a choir-really goes off into a spiritual direction with references to angels carrying him away and passing through the Milky Way and the moon beams--"just to welcome Dean."

more references that combine both aspect of Dean's death with heavenly/religious allusions: blowing on the horn in the sky, and now a 'new star is born, the little rebel heard his call, now he'll be acting for us all in dreams'

But I wonder if another point of the song (apparently it was part of 'The James Dean Story' documentary) was to hammer on the fact that James Dean was dead-not recovering in a hospital or hiding out in the desert

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