Glen Campbell
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Background information
Born April 22, 1936 (1936-04-22) (age 71)
Delight, Arkansas
Genre(s) Country, Rock,
Folk, Pop
Occupation(s) Solo artist, session musician,
composer
Instrument(s) Singer, guitar, banjo, bagpipes
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, Leon Russell
Website
www.glencampbellshow.com
Glen Campbell (b. April 22, 1936) is a Grammy Award, Dove Award winning American Country Pop singer and guitarist best known for a series of hits in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as for hosting a television variety show called The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour on CBS television. His hits include "Gentle On My Mind", "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and "Rhinestone Cowboy". Campbell made history by winning a Grammy in both country and pop categories in 1967: "Gentle On My Mind" snatched the country honors, and "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" won in pop. He owns trophies for Male Vocalist of the Year from both the CMA and the ACM, and took the CMA's top honor as Entertainer of the Year. During his 40 years in show business, Glen has released more than 70 albums. He has sold 45 million records and racked up 12 RIAA Gold albums, 4 Platinum albums and 1 Double-Platinum album. Of his 75 trips up the charts, 27 landed in the Top 10. Campbell was hand-picked by actor John Wayne to play alongside him in the 1969 film True Grit, which gave Wayne his only Academy Award; and Campbell sang and had a hit with the title song (by the same name) which was nominated for an Academy Award. He performed it live at that years Academy Awards Show. In 2005, Campbell was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Biography
1950s-early 1960s: session musician and the Beach Boys
Campbell, one of twelve children born into the tiny community of Delight, Arkansas, then a communiity of less than 100 residents, started 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, Jan & Dean 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.
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.
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.
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 & 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.
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 2007.
Glen will be performing with Andy Williams at The Moon River Theater in Branson, Mo. May 18- Jun 16, 2007
