He also became a born-again Christian and recorded religious albums while never cutting back on touring. Once the hits dried up, Campbell struggled with alcoholism and turbulent marriage battles. “He was a multimedia star before almost anyone else – music, film, television, he mastered all of it with a totally unpretentious charm and joy,” said singer-songwriter Cait Brennan. Willie Nelson and Glen Campbell perform at the 20th Autry National Center gala in Los Angeles in 2007. When disco dominated the pop charts, he showed an uncanny ability to adapt by releasing Southern Nights, the Allen Toussaint song redone with a stomping dance beat, and Rhinestone Cowboy, which became ubiquitous at dance clubs and roller rinks across middle America. Like Cash, Campbell hosted a popular television show that defined genres in the artists it showcased. It was a great thing for country music, and frankly, for pop music”.Ĭampbell racked up 48 country hits and 34 pop hits under his belt between 19 – a remarkable accomplishment, considering such versatility in reaching both audiences predated the new country trend that Garth Brooks and others would develop in the early 1990s. He was a multimedia star before almost anyone else Cait BrennanĬharlie Daniels said in an emailed statement that Campbell “filled a niche in American music that very few people have ever reached … He represented the best of the pop and the best of country, and he pulled people in from both sides. While his peers Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, and other country stars claimed to be outlaws, Campbell’s songs were middle-of-the-road relatable, and often cast in a sad light. He was the type of star the crosscurrent of America could relate to. Webb’s “melodies and chord progressions were as good as anything I’d ever heard”.Īs the Woodstock generation emerged later that decade and tastes changed, Campbell remained deceptively clean-cut despite his own demons. I miss that era,” he told this writer in 2005. “That’s what we grew up with – the good songs, the good lyrics, the good big-band stuff. Songs like Wichita Lineman, By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Galveston, and Where’s the Playground Susie told strong narratives, were draped in melancholy and, through the use of stirring string arrangements, transported the listener into three-minute dramas that had cinematic sweep.Ĭampbell credited the fact that he and Webb grew up within 150 miles of each another as one of the reasons why they had similar sensibilities. Despite a few attempts to go solo during the Wrecking Crew years, it took Campbell’s association with songwriter Jimmy Webb where he forged his own territory between country and pop. Photograph: Las Vegas New Bureau Archives Handout/EPAĪll that experience meant, by 1967, Campbell was a different kind of country artist. Glen Campbell on stage at the International Hotel in Las Vegas in 1970. Even though the song failed to chart, Campbell joined the band for a five-month tour in 1964-65 where he replaced Wilson, playing his bass and singing his falsetto leads, after Wilson suffered a breakdown and refused to go on the road. The Beach Boys auteur co-wrote Guess I’m Dumb, Campbell’s first single. His association with Brian Wilson was particularly fortuitous. That’s his rhythm line on Sinatra’s Strangers in the Night, his comeback hit from 1966 he played bubblegum riffs for the Monkees his guitar rings out on Viva Las Vegas by Presley and, alongside his voice, on the Beach Boys’ landmark album Pet Sounds. His guitar touched the landmark recordings of his time. It was the early 1960s and his impressive guitar skills earned him a place in the Wrecking Crew, a collection of LA session musicians who played on hundreds of recordings for the era’s biggest names – Nat King Cole, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Phil Spector, Sam Cooke, Dean Martin, Simon and Garfunkel, Jan and Dean, the Beach Boys, and many others. Not one for manual labor, he left at age 16 and worked the south-west honky-tonk circuit for eight years until landing in Los Angeles. He spent his childhood on an Arkansas farm with no electricity, where he was the seventh son in a family of eight boys and four girls. Campbell, who died on Tuesday, aged 81, of Alzheimer’s disease, was a guitar prodigy at age 10.
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