Remembering Glen Campbell, in songs and stories
After scoring his first big hit with “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” it took Glen Campbell more than a decade to actually move to Arizona. When he did, he found one of the hottest country music scenes around — and the guitarist who would serve as his bandleader for 15 years.
“I moved to Arizona in ’79 and started at Arizona State,” says Jeff Dayton, now a Nashville-based singer, songwriter and producer who returns to Phoenix on Dec. 28 to perform “A Salute to Glen Campbell” at the Musical Instrument Museum.
Dayton wouldn’t finish his B.A. in music until 1985, but he started playing in bands right away. In fact, maybe that’s why it took him so long to graduate.
A hot country scene in Phoenix
“I fell into a great situation where the weather was great and there was lots of work,” he says. “‘Urban Cowboy’ had just come out, and everyone was buying Wranglers and cowboy hats. We were part of the scene in the old countryswing days, Bluegrass Country, Honkytonk Sue’s, those places, and then we became kind of ensconced as the house band at the DoubleTree in Scottsdale. It was called the Cork Tree Lounge.”
That’s where he got to know other top talents in town, including guitarist Ray Herndon and others who became the core of Lyle Lovett’s band starting with his 1986 debut album.
By that time, Dayton was an up-and-comer with his own band and bragging rights to a No. 1 hit on country radio. Just one station, Phoenix’s KNIX, but still. And in 1987 the Jeff Dayton Band won the Marlboro Country Music Roundup, beating out finalists including the Herndon Brothers Band for a $5,000 cash prize and the opening spot in an upcoming concert with Alabama, Merle Haggard and the Judds.
Campbell, who had finally gotten to Phoenix a few years earlier, was at Veterans Memorial Coliseum to see his friend Haggard, but he stopped backstage to congratulate the local openers, Dayton recalls. By chance, Campbell was also at their next gig, the grand opening of Desert Mountain Golf Course in Scottsdale, where he was having dinner with Jack Nicklaus.
Glen Campbell’s rock-and-roll legacy
“Since I’d already met him, I asked him if he wanted to sit in, and he did,” Dayton says. “We did about a 30minute jam at this party and people went nuts, of course. But he called me a few days later and said, ‘I’d love to hire you as my bandleader and take all the guys with me as my band.’”
In his “Salute” shows, Dayton and his band play the hits that got Campbell into the Country Music Hall of Fame, including “Wichita Lineman” and “Rhinestone Cowboy,” and they also take a tour through the music that some would argue should put him in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, too.
Thanks to the 2008 documentary “The Wrecking Crew,” there’s a lot more public awareness of Campbell’s influence on dozens of hit songs from the early ’60s when he was part of an elite cadre of session musicians. If you’re a Beach Boys fan, to take just one example, that’s Glen’s guitar on “Pet Sounds,” the breakthrough album that spurred the Beatles to make “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
“People love telling me that,” Dayton says. “‘Did you know Glen Campbell played with the Beach Boys?’ And I say, ‘Yeah, I do know that.’”
It was a challenge to keep up with Campbell onstage
That’s because Dayton also played with the Beach Boys, after Campbell and the band got called up to do an encore at a concert.
In his 15-year stint with Campbell, Dayton also got to play on television, at the Grand Ole Opry and even at the White House. And that means he has a lot of personal stories to mix into his concerts, too.
“It was just a crazy good time,” he says. “Glen’s musicianship was the top level. He didn’t have the school musician background. He always said, ‘I never read music enough to hurt my playing.’ And he just needed guys that got it without being told what to do, and he respected our band enough to give us that job. And basically the job was to keep Glen happy and don’t mess up in front of a bunch of folks. When you’re playing ‘The Today Show’ or you’re playing at the White House, just smile. Or as Glen used to say on the golf course, ‘Swing hard in case you hit it.’ …
“He was always fun to be around, whether he was cutting up cantaloupe in his kitchen in Phoenix or we were in a hotel room on the road somewhere. I think he thought he was in a hotel room a lot at the end of his life because he was in memory care.”
Campbell was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2010 and went out on a “Goodbye Tour” in 2012. Day- ton had moved to Nashville in 2000, so he was no longer playing with the star, but he got to see him at the famed Ryman Auditorium on that last tour, and they remained friends until Campbell’s death in 2017.
‘The biggest gift anybody could get’
“I don’t know how to describe how kind he was to me, but he really took me under his wings in a lot of ways,” he says. “There’s a song I wrote called ‘Long Slow Train Out of Town,’ and I do that in the show. It’s a description of what turned out to be my last visit with Glen, watching him with tears in his eyes, unable to communicate what he was trying to say. That was really moving, and it just brought up how much I love the guy, you know?
“He gave me the biggest gift that anybody could get in the music business. I got a career with a Hall of Famer.” Talk to the writer about arts and culture at kerry