Country star Glen Campbell dies at 81
Glen Campbell, the legendary country singer, died Tuesday after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. Campbell, who was best known for his 1975 hit Rhinestone Cowboy, opened country music to whole new audiences.
Glen Travis Campbell brought country music to new audiences. He found success as a session musician before embarking on a solo ca- reer that included smashes Gentle On My Mind, Galveston, Wichita Lineman and Rhinestone Cowboy and that landed him in the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Campbell died Tuesday at 81, according to his Universal Music publicist, Tim Plumley.
Campbell was born in Delight, Ark., the seventh son of a seventh son in a farming family.
“I spent the early parts of my life looking at the north end of a southbound mule and it didn’t take long to figure out that a guitar was a lot lighter than a plow handle,” he said in a press bio in the late 1970s .
Each member of Campbell’s family played guitar, and he received a $5 Sears & Roebuck guitar when he was 4 years old. By 6, he was a prodigy, internalizing music that ranged from simple country to sophisticated jazz. He dropped out of school in the 10th grade, left Arkansas and played in a New Mexico-based band led by his uncle, Dick Bills. He also married first wife Diane Kirk, though that marriage lasted less than three years.
While playing an Albuquerque club called the Hitching Post, Campbell met Billie Nunley, who soon became his second wife. The newlyweds left for California in
1960, riding to Los Angeles in a
1957 Chevrolet with $300 and a small trailer of meager belongings.
Campbell’s guitar acumen and versatility made him an essential player on Los Angeles’ thriving recording scene in the 1960s, and he contributed to sessions for Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, The Mamas and The Papas, Merle Haggard and more. Campbell couldn’t read music, but he quickly became a respected, firstcall player.
Campbell signed with Capitol
Country music “is earthy material — stories of things that happen to everyday people. I call it ‘people music.’ ” TV Guide interview, 1969
Records in late 1962. His early albums received little attention or acclaim, but he broke into the mainstream in 1967, first with the Top 20 country hit Burning Bridges, but most notably with a nimble version of his friend John Hartford’s drifter’s masterpiece, Gentle On My Mind.
The song did not hit the top of the country charts, but it was performing rights organization BMI’s most-played song of 1969 and 1970. In 1999, BMI ranked Gentle as the second-most-played country song of the century and the 16th-most-played song of the century in any genre.
Campbell’s affable stage presence and camera-ready looks made him a natural for television.
“Someday, in the very near future, this talented young man is going to have his own television show,” said comedian Joey Bishop in 1967, introducing Campbell on a late-night variety show. Tommy Smothers of musical comedy act The Smothers Brothers watched and listened with interest. In early 1968, the Smothers Brothers announced that Campbell would host his own television show.
Campbell’s show began as The Summer Brothers Smothers Show, a summer replacement for The Smothers Brothers. It ran as a weekly variety show from 1969 to 1972. Each week, Campbell would sing the opening lines of Gentle On My Mind and announce to viewers that they were watching The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour.
“I had albums before that, but once the TV show started, everything really took off,” Campbell told The (Nashville) Tennessean in 2005. “I used that show to get every country act I could onto television.”
Four of Campbell’s singles reached country music’s Top 10 in 1970, but his sales domination began to subside. CBS canceled his show, and his marriage to Billie was in trouble. Campbell de-
veloped an over-fondness for Glenlivet scotch, and his dedication to touring came at the expense of his recordings.
But in 1975, after more than six years without a No. 1 hit, Campbell staged a comeback with Rhinestone Cowboy. The song topped country and pop charts and re-established him as a hitmaking, seat-filling force.
Rhinestone Cowboy was a major anthem in the summer of 1975. In early fall, Billie Jean Campbell filed for divorce. By then, Campbell had, he would later reveal, started using cocaine. That year, he also began dating Sarah Barg, the estranged wife of his friend and fellow performer, Mac Davis. He and Barg were married in 1976, but Campbell’s cocaine use escalated and the relationship suffered.
Campbell returned to the top of the charts in 1977 with Southern Nights, his final No. 1 hit. His behavior, though, was increasingly erratic. Campbell and Barg divorced in 1980. A near-overdose in Las Vegas and a new relationship with a Radio City Music Hall Rockette named Kimberley Woolen helped spur newfound faith and a change of direction.
Campbell married Woolen in
1982, and she would be a sustaining influence for the rest of his life. He stopped using cocaine, and he eventually halted his drinking.
He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in
2005, by which time he was already showing signs of dementia, seeming shaky in interviews though he clearly understood and appreciated the honor.
“You can have ‘male vocalist’ and all that stuff,” he told The Tennessean. “I’ll take the Hall of Fame. It’s the highest honor you can have in country music, and this makes me feel so good.”
In 2011, Campbell and his wife announced that he had Alzheimer’s disease.
At the Grammy Awards in February 2012, The Band Perry performed Gentle On My Mind, and Blake Shelton sang Southern Nights before Campbell took the stage to sing Rhinestone Cowboy, with Paul McCartney pumping his fist from the audience in approval.
“There’s a lot of sadness, ( but) we just continue to try to make the best of every day and keep a sense of humor,” his wife told People.
Campbell released his final album, Adios, in June.