‘I’M A COUNTRY BOY WHO SINGS’
Glen Campbell gained popularity in the late 1960s
NASHVILLE — Glen Campbell, the grinning, high-pitched entertainer whose dozens of hit singles included Rhinestone Cowboy and Wichita Lineman and whose appeal spanned country, pop, television and movies, died Tuesday, his family said. He was 81.
Campbell’s family said the singer died Tuesday morning in Nashville, and publicist Sandy Brokaw confirmed the news. No cause was immediately given. Campbell announced in June 2011 that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and that it was in its early stages at that time.
In the late 1960s and well into the ’70s, the Arkansas native seemed to be everywhere, known by his boyish face, wavy hair and friendly tenor. He won five Grammys, sold more than 45 million records, had 12 gold albums and 75 chart hits, including No. 1 songs with Rhinestone Cowboy and Southern Nights.
His performance of the title song from True Grit, a 1969 release in which he plays a Texas Ranger alongside Oscar-winner John Wayne, received an Academy Award nomination. He twice won album of the year awards from the Academy of Country Music and was voted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2005. Seven years later, he received a Grammy for lifetime achievement.
He was among a wave of country crossover stars that included Johnny Cash, Roy Clark and Kenny Rogers, and like many of his contemporaries, he enjoyed success on television. Campbell had a weekly audience of some 50 million people for the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, on CBS from 1969 to 1972. He gained new fans decades later when the show was rerun on the cable channel CMT.
“I did what my dad told me to do — ‘Be nice, son, and don’t cuss. And, be nice to people.’ And, that’s the way I handled myself, and people were very, very nice to me,” Campbell told the London Daily Telegraph in 2011.
He released more than 70 of his own albums and recorded a series of gospel CDs in the 1990s. A 2011 farewell album, Ghost On the Canvas, includes contributions from Jacob Dylan, Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick and Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins.
The documentary Glen Campbell ... I’ll Be Me came out in 2014. The film about Campbell’s 2011-12 farewell tour offers a poignant look at his decline from Alzheimer’s while showcasing his virtuoso guitar chops that somehow continued to shine even as his mind unravelled. The song I’m Not Gonna Miss You won a Grammy for best country song in 2015 and was nominated for an Oscar for best original song.
Campbell’s musical career dated back to the early years of rock ’n’ roll. He toured with the Champs of Tequila fame when the group included two singers who formed the popular ’70s duo Seals & Crofts. He was part of the house band for the ABC TV show Shindig! and was a member of Phil Spector’s Wrecking Crew studio band. He played guitar on Frank Sinatra’s Strangers In the Night, the Monkees’ I’m a Believer and Elvis Presley’s Viva Las Vegas.
“We’d get the rock ’n’ roll guys and play all that, then we’d get Sinatra and Dean Martin,” Campbell told The Associated Press in 2011. “That was a kick. I really enjoyed that. I didn’t want to go nowhere. I was making more money than I ever made just doing studio work.”
A sharecropper’s son, and one of 12 children, he was born April 22, 1936 outside of Delight, Ark. and grew up revering such country music stars as Hank Williams.
“I’m not a country singer per se,” Campbell once said. “I’m a country boy who sings.”
He was just four when he learned to play guitar. As a teenager, anxious to escape a life of farm work and unpaid bills, he moved to Albuquerque, N.M. to join his uncle’s band and appear on his uncle’s radio show. By his early 20s, he had formed his own group, the Western Wranglers, and moved to Los Angeles. He opened for the Doors and sang and played bass with the Beach Boys as a replacement for Brian Wilson, who had retired from touring to concentrate on studio work in the mid-’60s. In 1966, Campbell played on the Beach Boys’ classic Pet Sounds album.
“I didn’t go to Nashville because Nashville at that time seemed one-dimensional to me,” Campbell told the AP. “I’m a jazzer. I just love to get the guitar and play the hell out of it if I can.”
He was married four times and had eight children. As he would confide in painful detail, Campbell suffered for his fame and made others suffer as well. He drank heavily, used drugs and indulged in a turbulent relationship with country singer Tanya Tucker in the early 1980s.
He is survived by his wife, Kim; their three children, Cal, Shannon and Ashley; and his children from previous marriages, Debby, Kelli, Travis, Kane and Dillon.