Glen Campbell

The Arkansas guitarist and singer whose 1968 recording of Jimmy Webb's "Wichita Lineman" reached 3 on the pop chart.

From Billstown to the Goodtime Hour

Glen Travis Campbell was born on April 22, 1936 in Billstown, Pike County, Arkansas, the seventh son in a sharecropper family of twelve children, and died on August 8, 2017 in Nashville, aged 81. He took up guitar around age four, was on local radio around six, and left school in the tenth grade at 14 to work in Houston. At 17 he moved to Albuquerque to join an uncle's band, and in 1958 formed the Western Wranglers. In 1960 he moved to Los Angeles as a session musician, never learned to read music, and by 1963, per Wikipedia, had played on 586 recorded songs, for the Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, the Monkees, Merle Haggard, Phil Spector and Nancy Sinatra. He was briefly a member of the Champs from October 1960 to May 1961, and substituted for Brian Wilson on Beach Boys tours from December 1964 to mid-May 1965, and played guitar on Pet Sounds in 1966.

His debut single "Turn Around, Look at Me" reached 62 in 1961 on Crest, and he signed to Capitol in 1962. "Universal Soldier" reached 45 in 1965. In 1967 came "Gentle on My Mind" and "By the Time I Get to Phoenix", with four Grammys, and in 1968 "Wichita Lineman" and the CMA's entertainer of the year. He hosted The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour on CBS from January 1969 to June 1972, acted in True Grit (1969, with John Wayne) and Norwood (1970), and had two US number 1s in "Rhinestone Cowboy" (1975) and "Southern Nights" (1977). About 80 songs charted, 29 in the top ten, and nine reached number 1 on at least one chart. He voiced Chanticleer in Rock-a-Doodle (1991).

He entered the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2005, returned to Capitol for Meet Glen Campbell (2008) and made Ghost on the Canvas (2010), meant as a farewell. A Goodbye Tour, with three of his children in the band, ended with a final show on November 30, 2012 in Napa, California; he recorded "I'm Not Gonna Miss You" in January 2013, which earned an Oscar nomination in 2015 and a Grammy, and he retired that year. The documentary Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me, directed by James Keach, follows the tour; its soundtrack won a Grammy in 2016. Adios, recorded in 2012 and 2013, was released on June 9, 2017. He received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement award in 2012 and the ACM's career achievement award in 2016.