RHINESTONE COWBOY: GLEN CAMPBELL DIES AT 81
Dolly Parton leads tributes to star who recorded 75 chart hits
Glen Campbell, the singer whose dozens of hit singles included Rhinestone Cowboy and Wichita Lineman and whose appeal spanned country, pop, television and movies, died on Tuesday. He was 81.
Campbell’s family said the singer died in Nashville, Tennessee. No cause was given. In June 2011, Campbell announced that he had Alzheimer’s disease.
“Glen is one of the greatest voices there ever was in the business and he was one of the greatest musicians,” Dolly Parton said in a video statement. “He was a wonderful session musician as well. A lot of people don’t realize that, but he could play anything and he could play it really well.”
“Thank you Glen Campbell for sharing your talent with us for so many years. May you rest in peace my friend,” Charlie Daniels wrote on social media.
One of Campbell’s daughters, Ashley, wrote on Twitter: “I owe him everything I am and everything I ever will be. He will be remembered so well and with so much love.”
In the late 1960s and well into the 1970s, 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 movie in which he played a Texas Ranger alongside Oscar winner John Wayne, received an Academy Award nomination.
Campbell 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.
His last record was Adios, which came out in June and features songs that Campbell loved to sing but never recorded, including tunes made famous by Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt and Johnny Cash. Ashley Campbell, also a musician, made a guest appearance and said making the album was therapeutic.
Campbell was among a wave of country crossover stars that included Johnny Cash, Roy Clark and Kenny Rogers.
He had a weekly TV audience of 50 million people for the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, on CBS from 1969 to 1972. He gained new fans decades later when the show, featuring his cheerful greeting “Hi, I’m Glen Campbell,” was rerun on cable channel CMT.
“I did what my Dad told me to do — ‘Be nice, son, and don’t cuss.’ And that’s the way I handled myself, and people were very nice to me,” Campbell told the Daily Telegraph in 2011.
He released more than 70 of his own albums, and in the 1990s recorded a series of gospel CDs. A 2011 farewell album, Ghost On the Canvas, included 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 look at his decline from Alzheimer’s while showcasing his virtuoso guitar talents that continued to shine as his mind unravelled.
Campbell’s musical career dated back to the early years of rock ’n’ roll. He was part of the house band for the ABC TV show Shindig! and a member of Phil Spector’s Wrecking Crew studio band that played on hits by the Ronettes, the Righteous Brothers and the Crystals. He played guitar on Frank Sinatra’s Strangers In the Night, the Monkees’ I’m a Believer and Elvis Presley’s Viva Las Vegas. He also played lead guitar on the Irish Rovers’ 1960s hit The Unicorn Song.
A sharecropper’s son and one of 12 children, Campbell was born near Delight, Arkansas, and grew up revering country music stars such 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 New Mexico to join his uncle’s band. 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. In 1966, Campbell played on the Beach Boys’ classic Pet Sounds album.
By the late 1960s, he was a performer on his own, an appearance on Joey Bishop’s show leading to his TV breakthrough.
Campbell was married four times and had eight children. However, he drank heavily, used drugs and indulged in a turbulent relationship with country singer Tanya Tucker in the early 1980s.
In 2003, he was arrested near his home in Phoenix after causing a traffic accident. He later pleaded guilty to “extreme” driving under the influence and leaving the scene of an accident, and served 10 days in jail.
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. He had 10 grandchildren.
Among Campbell’s hits, Rhinestone Cowboy became his personal anthem. Written and recorded by Larry Weiss in 1974, the song received little attention until Campbell heard it on the radio and related to the story of a performer who triumphs over despair and hardship. Campbell’s version was a chart topper in 1975.
“I thought it was my autobiography set to song,” he later wrote.