NASHVILLE — His performances on the Grand Ole Opry are memorable. Wearing a flashy rhinestone suit, Little Jimmy Dickens charges onto the stage carrying a J200 Gibson guitar about as big as he is (4 feet 11 inches).
He launches into a song, probably a funny one like his 1965 hit "May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose." Later, there's a quip or two, like this comment to 6-foot-6-inch country singer Trace Adkins: "You're so tall, if you fell down, you'd be halfway home when you got up."
But for a couple of months over the winter, the songs and jokes were silent. The 88-year-old Dickens was sidelined with health issues, and the usual Opry verve was diminished.
He returned to the stage in late February, resuming his career as one of the oldest performers in any genre of music still entertaining: B.B. King is 83, Tony Bennett 82 and Andy Williams 81.
In country music, he's among the last of the generation that included Hank Williams, Roy Acuff, Minnie Pearl, Bill Monroe and Ernest Tubb. Kitty Wells, "the queen of country music," is 89 but retired except for occasional public appearances.
His illness hasn't diminished his drive to perform and he's mining his age for new jokes.
"I could do two, 45-minute shows and never repeat one," Dickens says.
On a recent Friday night Opry show, the se observations:
"You know you're 88 when your wife says, 'Let's run upstairs and make love,' and you say, 'I can't do both.'
"You know you're 88 when you see a pretty girl in a bikini and your Pacemaker makes the garage door go up."
Dickens clearly still relishes performing. And fans respond with a chorus of camera clicks when he takes the stage of the Opry.
He missed six weeks this year after surgery for a subdural hematoma and a month last year for bloodstream and urinary tract infections.
"It hurt because I couldn't do what I love to do," he said in an interview in his dressing room two hours before a show. While ill, he didn't even listen to the Opry radio broadcast or watch the televised portion, explaining, "I just wanted to get in the harness."
His popularity is not lost on the younger generation. Brad Paisley — 36 and young enough to be Dickens' grandson — uses a big screen at his concerts as part of a multimedia presentation to show Dickens playing "Guitar Zero," a takeoff on a video game.
"He stands taller than anyone else, in my mind," Paisley says.
Dickens' resume is packed with achievements. Member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. Sixty years on the Opry singing country classics like "Out Behind the Barn" and "I'm Little but I'm Loud." He's made more than a dozen trips to perform in Europe and entertained troops in Vietnam three times.
This night, he's not feeling well, bothered by the sniffles. Dickens also is frustrated because he can't find a guitar pick, lamenting, "I left 'em at home." A colleague comes to the rescue and locates four down the hall. (What better place to find a guitar pick than the Grand Ole Opry?)
Dickens is resplendent in a white cowboy hat, blue jeans and a colorful shirt with crimson and black stripes offset by a gold watch and a gold chain peeking out around his neck. Several rhinestone suits hang against the wall.
Dickens is credited with introducing rhinestone suits to country music around 1950. He has no idea how many rhinestone suits he owns, though he still has the first one he ever bought.
"My wife won't let me touch 'em," he said. "They're all sealed up."
Dickens performs on the Opry for up to 4,400 people each show — most times two shows a night on Saturday and one on Friday. Thus, he sings before a potential audience of 500,000 people each year — without leaving Nashville.
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