I reached out to Technical Support and got a fix for the problem I was having.
It seems when using an older MySQL driver with JMP (earlier than 5.3), you have to choose a selection box "Don't prompt when connecting" for JMP not to crash instantly when making a query connection. This is done in the System DSN tab with a 64 bit driver.
Works great with this selected! Thanks Dahlia for the assist!
DMerchen