[Vision2020] Glen Campbell, hit singer and guitarist, dead at 81

Tue Aug 8 16:53:48 PDT 2017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUBhE00h9U0

Ron Force
Moscow Idaho USA

On Tue, Aug 8, 2017 at 4:49 PM, Tom Hansen <thansen at moscow.com> wrote:

> Courtesy of *CNN* at:
>
> http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/08/entertainment/glen-campbell-dies/index.htmlq
>
> ----------------------------------
> Glen Campbell, hit singer and guitarist, dead at 81
>
> (CNN) - Glen Campbell, the upbeat guitarist from Delight, Arkansas, whose
> smooth vocals and down-home manner made him a mainstay of music and
> television for decades, has died, his family announced on Facebook on
> Tuesday. He was 81.
>
> "It is with the heaviest of hearts that we announce the passing of our
> beloved husband, father, grandfather, and legendary singer and guitarist,
> Glen Travis Campbell ... following his long and courageous battle with
> Alzheimer's disease," a Facebook statement said.
>
> Campbell is best remembered for a string of country-inflected hits that
> ran from the mid-'60s to the late '80s: "Gentle on My Mind," "Rhinestone
> Cowboy," "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," "Wichita Lineman," "Galveston,"
> "Southern Nights" and "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" among them.
>
> They fit in neatly on both pop and country radio, with two of them --
> "Rhinestone Cowboy" and "Southern Nights" -- hitting No. 1 on the Billboard
> Hot 100.
>
> He was also famous for "The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour," a TV variety
> show that ran from 1969 to 1972.
>
> Before he became a solo star, Campbell was one of the music business' most
> in-demand session guitarists, known for his astonishing speed and his
> brilliant ear.
> He was part of the famed "Wrecking Crew" of L.A. session musicians that
> included Hal Blaine, Leon Russell, Larry Knechtel and Carol Kaye. The crack
> band played on records by Phil Spector, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, the
> Monkees, the Beach Boys and Frank Sinatra.
>
> That's Campbell's fretwork on the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" and "Help
> Me Rhonda," Sinatra's "Something in the Night" and Elvis Presley's "Viva
> Las Vegas," among hundreds of recordings.
>
> Such versatility was a necessity to get work and stay fresh, Campbell said
> in an interview. As a teenager, he was in a band with his uncle and the
> group had a regular radio gig.
>
> "Music was my world before they started putting a label on it," he told
> ClassicBands.com in 1999. "We had a five-day-a-week radio show, six,
> seven years. You use up a lot of material doing that. We did everything
> from country to pop, when rock came along."
>
> Dolly Parton, Brad Paisley, Brian Wilson, Lenny Kravitz and other
> musicians flooded Twitter with tributes to Campbell.
>
> "Thank you Glen Campbell for sharing your talent with us for so many years
> May you rest in peace my friend You will never be forgotten," said fellow
> country star Charlie Daniels.
>
> "RIP my dear old friend Glen Campbell. Music has lost a giant of a man & a
> talent. I shall be forever grateful for everything he did for me," said
> singer Anne Murray.
> The singer's daughter, Ashley Campbell, said she is "heartbroken. I owe
> him everything I am, and everything I ever will be. He will be remembered
> so well and with so much love."
>
> Seventh son of a seventh son
>
> Glen Travis Campbell was born April 22, 1936, in Delight, Arkansas, a very
> small town in the southwestern part of the state. (More accurately, he was
> born in Billstown, an even smaller community outside of Delight.) His
> father was a sharecropper and Campbell was his seventh son -- making Glen,
> according to many sources, the seventh son of a seventh son.
>
> He learned to play music on a five-dollar Sears guitar he received from
> his father, taking lessons from his Uncle Boo. His family moved to Houston
> when he was an adolescent. From there, he journeyed to Albuquerque to join
> his uncle's band, Dick Bills and the Sandia Mountain Boys. He later formed
> his own group, the Western Wranglers.
>
> But the real activity was in Los Angeles, where Campbell moved in 1960. He
> drew the attention of record companies with his song "Turn Around, Look at
> Me" -- later a hit for the Vogues -- and quickly started playing recording
> sessions, where his bright guitar picking and lightning fingers stood out.
>
>
> His colleagues were in awe. Many members of the Wrecking Crew were
> longtime professionals who'd come from the jazz and pop worlds with years
> of training. Campbell could just flat-out play.
>
> "Glen Campbell didn't really read music. He could look at charts and get a
> sense of what was going on, but everything he did was by ear," said Hal
> Blaine, one of the great rock 'n' roll drummers.
>
> And Campbell had a blast.
>
> ''Boy, I was floatin' on high water, coming down from Arkansas and getting
> to play music with these people," he told The Age of Melbourne, Australia,
> in 2009.
>
> He didn't spend all the time in the studio, either. When Brian Wilson
> decided to stop touring with the Beach Boys, Campbell replaced him on the
> road. Always hoping for his own singing career, he put out a regular stream
> of singles. At one point in 1967, he opened for the Doors -- just him and
> his guitar, dealing with a crowd clamoring for Jim Morrison.
>
> A Rhinestone Cowboy
>
> It wasn't until being paired with a sympathetic producer, Al DeLory, that
> Campbell found his groove. He first hit with "Gentle on My Mind," a John
> Hartford tune that was a minor success upon its first release in 1967.
>
> That was followed by Jimmy Webb's "By the Time I Get to Phoenix,"
> Campbell's breakthrough, and continued with "I Wanna Live," "Dreams of the
> Everyday Housewife," and perhaps Campbell's most fully realized song, the
> Webb-written "Wichita Lineman."
> The song was an answer to a Campbell request, Webb recalled in 2012.
>
> " 'Phoenix' could have been a one-off thing," Webb told American
> Songwriter. But not long after meeting in person, Campbell called Webb. "He
> said, 'Can you write me a song about a town?' And I said, 'Well, I don't
> know ... let me work on it.' And he said, 'Well, just something
> geographical. ... And I remember writing 'Wichita Lineman' that afternoon.
> That was a song I absolutely wrote for Glen."
>
> Campbell won four Grammys at the 1968 ceremony, in both pop and country
> categories.
>
> By late 1968, Campbell was a TV star as well. He had taken over the time
> slot of the controversial "Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" for the summer
> and ended up with a surprise hit. CBS brought the show, now titled "The
> Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour," back in January 1969. It ran for three years.
>
> He was criticized for his clean-cut image and lighthearted attitude in the
> midst of late-'60s turmoil, but that was OK with him.
>
> "If I can just make a 40-year-old housewife put down her dish towel and
> say 'Oh!' -- why then, man, I've got it made,' " he told Time magazine.
>
> Later in 1969, he hit the big screen as a co-star in the John Wayne film
> "True Grit."
> Meanwhile, his songs hit the charts with the regularity of an assembly
> line, though seldom becoming big hits. He finally had a resurgence in the
> mid-'70s, however, with "Rhinestone Cowboy," one of the biggest hits of
> 1975, and "Southern Nights," a remake of an Allen Toussaint song.
>
> Fall and rebirth
>
> The high life took its toll, however. He drank heavily and did drugs. He
> became a mainstay of gossip columns in 1980, with his third marriage over,
> when he struck up a relationship with country spitfire Tanya Tucker. He was
> 44, she was 21, and their affair was tempestuous, full of expensive gifts,
> public displays of affection, rip-roaring fights and more melodrama than an
> album's worth of country songs.
>
> The relationship lasted 14 months.
>
> In 1983, Campbell married Kim Woollen, a former Rockette, and with her
> help, he cleaned up his act. There were a couple falls off the wagon -- in
> 2003 he was stopped for drunken driving in Phoenix and briefly jailed --
> but, in general, he held up his end of the bargain.
>
> "Before I met her, I didn't know where I was at, or where I was going. And
> after I met her, I knew where I was going, and I knew where I to wanted to
> go," he told CNN in 2012.
>
> In 1994, he wrote a memoir, "Rhinestone Cowboy," which talked about the
> good times and bad. He became a regular presence in Branson, Missouri,
> playing his hits and joking with the crowds.
>
> In 2011, he announced he had Alzheimer's. Despite the diagnosis, he
> released an album, "Ghost on the Canvas," to positive reviews, and followed
> it with a tour. He was showered with awards, including a lifetime honor
> from the Grammys.
>
> The Alzheimer's Assocation mourned the singer's death, saying he and his
> family "helped to bring Alzheimer's out of the shadows and into the
> spotlight with openness and honesty that has rallied people to take action
> on behalf of the cause."
>
> Later, he made a documentary, "Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me," that showcased
> the struggles on his final tour. A song from the movie, "I'm Not Gonna Miss
> You," was nominated for an Oscar.
>
> During the "Ghost" tour, there were times he would forget lyrics or find
> himself suddenly unfamiliar with a chord change. The audience urged him on,
> singing the song and guiding him back into the groove.
>
> He told CNN he had no regrets.
>
> "I am content with it. Don't cry over spilt milk," he said. "Get up and be
> a man and do what you have got to do."
>
> Campbell is survived by his wife, Kim, and eight children. Three previous
> marriages ended in divorce.
>
> ----------------------------------
>
> *"Rhinestone Cowboy"*
> http://www.tomandrodna.com/Songs/Glen_Campbell/Rhinestone_Cowboy.mp3
>
> Rest well, Glen.
>
> Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .
>
> "Moscow Cares"
> http://www.MoscowCares.com <http://www.moscowcares.com/>
>
> Tom Hansen
> Moscow, Idaho
>
>
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