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Glen Campbell

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Glen Campbell, December 2004
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Glen Campbell, December 2004

This article is about the singer. Glen Campbell is also the name of a town in Clearfield County of western Pennsylvania.
Glen Campbell (born April 22, 1936) is an American pop-country singer, best known for a series of hits in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as for hosting a television variety show.

Campbell is a native of Delight, Arkansas, and began playing the guitar as a youth without ever learning to read music. By the time he was eighteen, Campbell was touring the South as part of the "Western Wranglers". In 1958, Campbell moved to Los Angeles to become a session musician.

Campbell's was greatly in demand as a session musician in the 1960's. He is heard on some of the largest selling records of the 1960's with artists such as Bobby Darin, Rick Nelson, The Beach Boys (for which he was a touring member in 1965), Merle Haggard, The Monkees, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, The Association, and The Mamas & the Papas and of particular note, the Pet Sounds album by the Beach Boys. Campbell himself was a bona fide Beach Boy for a time, filling in for an ailing Brian Wilson on tour in 1964/65. Other classics featuring his outstanding guitar playing include: "Strangers In The Night" by Frank Sinatra, "You've Lost That Lovin Feeling" by the Righteous Brothers and "I'm A Believer" by The Monkees. Glen was part of the famous studio musicians clique known as "the wrecking crew", many of which went from session to session together as the same group. In addition to Campbell, Hal Blaine on drums and Carol Kaye on bass guitar were part of this elite group of studio musicians that defined many pop and rock recordings of the era. They were also heard on Phil Spector's wall of sound recordings in the early 1960's.

As a solo artist, he had moderate success regionally with his first single "Turn Around, Look at Me." "Too Late to Worry; Too Blue to Cry" and "Kentucky Means Paradise" were similarly popular within only a small section of the country audience. In 1962 Campbell signed with Capitol Records and released two instrumental albums and a number of vocal albums during his first 5 years with the label. However, despite releasing singles written by Brian Wilson ("Guess I'm Dumb" in 1965) and Buffy Sainte-Marie the same year ("The Universal Soldier"), Campbell was not achieving major success as a solo artist. It was rumored that Capitol was considering dropping him from the label in 1966 when he was teamed with producer Al DeLory and together they collaborated on 1967's "Gentle On My Mind".

The overnight success of "Gentle On My Mind" proved Campbell was ready to break through to the mainstream with "Gentle on My Mind" which was followed by the even bigger triumph of "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" later in 1967. and "I Wanna Live" and "Wichita Lineman" in 1968 (see 1968 in music).

Campbell would win two Grammy awards for his performances on "Gentle On My Mind" and "By The Time I Get To Phoenix".

Campbell's biggest hits in 1968–1969 came on evocative songs written by Jimmy Webb: "By the Time I Get to Phoenix", "Wichita Lineman," "Where's The Playground Susie?", and "Galveston". An album of mainly Webb penned compositions Reunion: The Songs of Jimmy Webb, released in 1974 is regarded by many as Campbell's finest album, although it produced no hit single records.

"Wichita Lineman" was selected as one of the greatest songs of the 20th century by Mojo Magazine in 1997 and by Blender Magazine in 2001.

After he hosted a 1968 summer replacement for television's The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour variety show, Campbell hosted his own weekly variety show, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, from January 1969 through June 1972. At the height of his popularity, a 1970 biography by Freda Kramer, The Glen Campbell Story, was published.

With Campbell's session work connections, he hosted major names in music on his show including: Eric Clapton and Cream, David Gates and Bread, The Monkees, Neil Diamond, Linda Ronstadt, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Roger Miller and helped launch the careers of Anne Murray, Mel Tillis and Jerry Reed all were regulars on his Goodtime Hour program.

During the early 1970s, Campbell released a long series of singles and appeared in the movies True Grit with John Wayne and Kim Darby and Norwood with Kim Darby and Joe Namath. The song "True Grit" was nominated for an Academy Award and Campbell performed it at the awards show that year.

After the cancellation of his CBS series in 1972, Campbell was seen regularly on network television. He co-starred in a made for TV movie, STRANGE HOMECOMING with Robert Culp and upcoming teen idol, Leif Garrett. He hosted a number of television specials, including the 1976 "DOWN HOME, DOWN UNDER" with guest star Olivia Newton John. He co-hosted the American Music Awards from 1976-1978 and headlined the 1979 NBC Special, "Glen Campbell: Back To Basics" with stars Seals and Crofts and Brenda Lee. He was a guest on many network talk and variety shows including: Donnie and Marie, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, Cher, Redd Foxx Comedy Hour, Merv Griffin, The Midnight Special with Wolfman Jack, DINAH!, Evening at Pops with Arthur Fiedler and The Mike Douglas Show. From 1982-1983 he hosted a 30 minute syndicated music show on NBC.

In the mid-1970s, he had more big hits with "Rhinestone Cowboy", "Southern Nights", and "Sunflower".

Rhinestone Cowboy was Campbell's largest selling single, initially with over 2 million copies sold in a matter of months. Campbell had heard the songwriter (Larry Weiss') version while on tour of Australia in 1974 and felt it was the perfect song for him to record. It was included in the Jaws movie parody song "Mr. Jaws" which also reached the top 10 in 1975. Rhinestone Cowboy continues to be used in soundtracks and TV shows, including Desperate Housewives in 2006. Other movies to feature the song include "Daddy Day Care" and "High School High". It was the inspiration for the 1982 Dolly Parton/Sly Stallone movie "Rhinestone".

Campbell made a techno/pop version of the song in 2002 with UK artists, Rikki and Daz and went to the top 10 in the UK with the dance version and related music video.

Southern Nights, by Allen Toussaint, his other #1 pop/rock/country hit was generated with the help of Jimmy Webb who turned Campbell onto the song and Jerry Reed who inspired the famous guitar lick introduction to the song which was the most played jukebox number of 1977.

After his #1 successes on the rock/pop/country charts in the mid/late 70's, Campbell's career cooled off. He left Capitol Records in 1981 after a reported dispute over the song "Highwayman" written by Jimmy Webb that the label would not release as a single.

Campbell made a cameo appearance in the 1981 Clint Eastwood movie "Any Which Way You Can" to which he recorded the title song.

Although he would never reach the top 40 pop charts after 1978, Glen Campbell continued to reach the country top 10 throughout the 1980's with songs such as "Faithless Love", "A Lady Like You", "Still Within The Sound of My Voice" and "The Hand That Rocks The Cradle" (a duet with Steve Wariner).

When Campbell began having trouble reaching the charts, and began to abuse drugs he was a frequently featured in the tabloids during his affair with 21 year old Tanya Tucker. By 1989, however, he had quit drugs and was regularly reaching the country Top Ten; songs like "She's Gone, Gone, Gone" were extremely popular. In the 1990s, Campbell mostly retired from recording, though he has not quit entirely. In all, over 40 of his albums reached the charts. In 1994, his autobiography, Rhinestone Cowboy, was published.

In 1999 Campbell was featured on VH-1's Behind The Music, A&E's Biography in 2001 and on a number of CMT programs in recent years. He is also credited with giving Alan Jackson his first big break. Campbell met Jackson's wife (a flight attendant with Delta Airlines) at the Atlanta Airport and gave her his publishing manager's business card located in Nashville. He went to work for Campbell's music publishing business in the early 1990's and later had many of his hit songs published in part by Campbell's company, Seventh Son Music. Campbell also served as an inspiration to Keith Urban. Urban cites Campbell as a strong influence on his performing career.

Although for almost a decade, Campbell had professed his sobriety to fans at concerts and in his autobiography, he was embarrassed by a drunk driving arrest that included a a charge of battery to a police officer (later dropped) in November 2003. He was sentenced to ten days in jail and community service, mostly due to the high level of intoxication.

In 2005, Campbell was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. He is reportedly working on a new CD with Jimmy Webb scheduled for release in late 2006.

In 2006, Campbell appeared as a contestant on the revival of I've Got a Secret.

He is currently years old.

Discography

External links

 

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