Reception
In the US, "Big Bad John" spent five weeks at number one on the pop chart, two weeks on the country chart, and ten weeks on the Easy Listening chart. It was also a number-two hit in the United Kingdom.
The song received a Grammy nomination for Record of the Year, while Dean's performance of the song earned him a nomination for Best Male Solo Vocal Performance.
Dean's LP Big Bad John and Other Fabulous Songs and Tales, where the song first appeared, reached number twenty-three in the pop charts. The song was the B-side of "I Won't Go Huntin' with You Jake", but ended up becoming much more popular than the latter.
Read more about this topic: Big Bad John
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)