Jesse Hamilton
Contestant #99342
Jesse started out by telling Ryan that he was 26 but had almost died three times during his lifetime:
- As an infant, Jesse almost died of tick fever. His grandpa found him in his crib and declared him "as limp as a dishrag".
- While shooting pistols with his buddy (Jesse's age unknown) he "almost got hit by a speeding bullet".
- Two months before the audition, Jesse almost got run over in his yard — the vehicle came within three feet of him.
Most entertaining were American Idol's self-proclaimed "Cheap Dramatizations" of each of the incidents. This marks one of the rare times that AI has attempted to recreate a story. In the dramatizations, Grandpa was wearing a "World's greatest grandpa" baseball cap, Pistol-shooting Jesse was wearing a "Shotgun 17" jersey and beaver baseball cap, and near-pancake Jesse was wearing some sort of fishing t-shirt.
Jesse decided to audition despite the fact that no one had ever heard him sing apart from his mother.
Simon asked him what he was going to sing and Jesse asked, "Can I try a Garth Brooks song? That's what I want to try, that sounds good, that? I want to try that." Simon told him to go on and Jesse looked like he was preparing to sing . . . and for the next 15 seconds, Jesse was only able to muster a timid "Oh man, I –". Jesse apparently got stuck while trying to sing The River but never could remember the lyrics. No one knew the song, but Randy suggested Brooks' If Tomorrow Never Comes, which Jesse was able to sing.
