Glen Campbell
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- For the town in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, see Glen Campbell, Pennsylvania.
| Glen Campbell | ||
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 Glen Campbell in December 2004.
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| Background information | ||
| Born | April 22, 1936 Delight, Arkansas |
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| Genre(s) | Country, Rock, Folk, Pop |
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| Occupation(s) | Solo artist, session musician, composer |
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| Instrument(s) | Singer, guitar, banjo | |
| Years active | 1960s-present | |
| Label(s) | Capitol | |
| Associated acts |
Bobby Darin, Rick Nelson, The Champs, Elvis Presley, Dean Martin, The Green River Boys, Frank Sinatra, Phil Spector, The Monkees, The Beach Boys, Bobbie Gentry, Anne Murray John Hartford, Jimmy Webb, Kenny Rogers |
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| Website | www.glencampbellshow.com | |
Glen Campbell (b. April 22, 1936 in Delight, Arkansas) 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. His hits include Gentle On My Mind, "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and "Rhinestone Cowboy".
Contents |
[edit] Biography
[edit] 1950s-early 1960s: Beach Boys
Campbell began playing guitar as a youth without learning to read music. By the time he was eighteen, he was touring the South as part of the Western Wranglers. In 1958, he moved to Los Angeles to become a session musician.
Campbell was greatly in demand as a session musician in the 1960s. He is heard on some of the largest-selling records of the era by such artists as Bobby Darin, Ricky Nelson, Merle Haggard, The Monkees, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, The Association, and The Mamas & the Papas.
He was a full-fledged member of The Beach Boys, filling in for an ailing Brian Wilson on tour in 1964 and 1965 and he also played on the Pet Sounds album.
Other classics featuring his outstanding guitar playing include: "Strangers in the Night" by Frank Sinatra, "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" by the Righteous Brothers and "I'm a Believer" by The Monkees.
Campbell was part of the famous studio musicians clique known as "The Wrecking Crew," many of whom 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 session 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 1960s.
[edit] Late 1960s: Wichita Lineman
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" (cut with a bluegrass group called the Green River Boys) 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 five 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 Dylanesque "Gentle On My Mind", written by John Hartford.
The overnight success of "Gentle On My Mind" proved Campbell was ready to break through to the mainstream. It 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.
Campbell would win two Grammy Awards for his performances on "Gentle On My Mind" and "By The Time I Get To Phoenix".
His biggest hits in 1968–1969 were with 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 in 2001.
[edit] 1970s: Goodtime Hour
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 who 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.
In 1971 Campbell took his show on the road for two nights to The Muny in Forest Park, (the largest and oldest outdoor theater in America) in St. Louis, Missouri.
After the cancellation of his CBS series in 1972, Campbell was still seen regularly on network television. He co-starred in a made-for-television 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 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: "Donny & Marie", "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson", "Cher", "The 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.
[edit] Late 1970s-1980s: Rhinestone Cowboy
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 movie soundtracks and TV shows, including "Desperate Housewives" in 2006. Movies to feature the song include Daddy Day Care and High School High. It was the inspiration for the 1982 Dolly Parton/Sylvester 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 crossover 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.
[edit] 1980s-2000s: Behind the music
After his #1 crossover chart successes in the mid- to late 1970s, 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, for 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 1980s 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 Tanya Tucker. By 1989, however, he had quit drugs and was regularly reaching the country Top 10; songs like "She's Gone, Gone, Gone" were extremely popular.
In the 1990s, Campbell had slowed 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 Network's "Biography" in 2001 and on a number of CMT programs.
He is also credited with giving Alan Jackson his first big break. Campbell met Jackson's wife (a flight attendant with Delta Air Lines) at the Atlanta Airport and gave her his publishing manager's business card. Jackson went to work for Campbell's music publishing business in the early 1990s 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, in November 2003 he was arrested for drunk driving that included a charge of battery to a police officer (later dropped)[1]. He was sentenced to 10 days in jail and community service, 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.
[edit] Discography
- Big Bluegrass Special 1962
- Swingin' 12 String Guitar 1963
- Too Late to Worry, Too Blue To Cry 1963
- The Astounding 12-String Guitar 1964
- The Big Bad Rock Guitar of Glen Campbell 1964
- Mr. 12 String Guitar 1966
- Burning Bridges (Glen Campbell album) 1967
- Gentle on My Mind 1967
- A New Place in the Sun 1968
- By the Time I Get to Phoenix 1968
- Country Soul 1968
- Hey Little One 1968
- Wichita Lineman 1968
- Country Music Star No. 1 1969
- Galveston 1969
- Glen Campbell: Live 1969
- True Grit 1969
- Where's the Playground Susie 1969
- Norwood 1970
- Oh Happy Day 1970
- The Glen Campbell Goodtime Album 1970
- Try a Little Kindness 1970
- Christmas with Glen Campbell 1971
- Satisfied Mind 1971
- The Last Time I Saw Her 1971
- Glen Travis Campbell 1972
- Glen Campbell 1973
- I Knew Jesus (Before He Was a Star) 1973
- I Remember Hank Williams 1973
- Houston (I'm Comin' to See You) 1974
- Reunion: The Songs Of Jimmy Webb 1974
- Arkansas 1975
- I'll Paint You a Song 1975
- Live in Japan 1975
- Rhinestone Cowboy 1975
- Bloodline 1976
- Southern Nights 1977
- Basic 1978
- Live at the Royal Festival Hall 1978
- Highwayman 1979
- Something 'Bout You Baby I Like 1980
- It's the World Gone Crazy 1981
- Old Home Town 1983
- Letter to Home 1984
- It's Just a Matter of Time 1986
- Still Within the Sound of My Voice 1988
- Country Boy 1988
- I Guess I Just Missed You 1988
- Light Years 1988
- No More Night 1988
- Unconditional Love 1988
- Walkin' in the Sun 1990
- Limited Collector's Edition 1990
- Merry Christmas 1991
- Show Me Your Way 1991
- Favorite Hymns 1992
- Rock-A-Doodle Soundtrack 1992
- Christmas with Glen Campbell 1992
- The World of Glen Campbell/ Live 1992
- Wings of Victory 1992
- Live in London 1993
- Somebody Like That 1993
- The Boy in Me 1994
- Glen Campbell 1994
- That Christmas Feeling 1997
- Branson City Limits 1998
- Home for the Holidays 1998
- In Concert 1999
- A Glen Campbell Christmas 1999
- Glen Campbell in Concert 2001
- That Christmas Feeling 2003
