Home » Jazz Musicians » Glen Campbell

Glen Campbell

Glen Campbell has always felt a divine touch in his life, as if he were given a gift he didn’t earn, but was allowed to use to make people happy and forget their worries for a time.

How else do you explain his life, one of the most extraordinary rags to riches stories in popular music history? The 12th child and seventh son of a dirt poor sharecropper born in the depths of the depression on April 22, 1936, Campbell drowned when he was a toddler in the Little Missouri River near his family’s Arkansas home. His lips were blue when he was pulled from the river and those who rescued him believed he was gone. But he lived miraculously after his brother Lyndell resuscitated him, and Campbell always suspected it was because of this gift.

It wasn’t long after this that Campbell’s father recognized his talent and bought him a $5 guitar from Sears & Roebuck at the age of four. He quickly showed himself to be a prodigy under the tutelage of his Uncle Boo. How could the two not be related? For it was clear Campbell was a special talent, so much so that he broke the poverty cycle and began to earn a living with his guitar as a teenager and went on to become one of the most respected, revered and popular performers of the rock ‘n’ roll era.

From his time as a groundbreaking musician for Elvis, Frank Sinatra, The Beach Boys and many others in the archetypical backing band The Wrecking Crew to his decade atop the charts to the grace he showed as he closed his career while fighting Alzheimer’s disease, there are few artists who have touched as many lives as the Rhinestone Cowboy. And left them smiling.

By the time Campbell won his sixth Grammy Award in 2014 for his final recording, “I’m Not Going to Miss You,” he had won most every award and achieved every milestone available to musicians. One of the best-selling solo male artists in U.S. chart history, Campbell released more than 70 albums, selling 50 million copies with more than 80 songs charting. He is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Musicians Hall of Fame. He won the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year, twice won the Academy of Country Music’s Album of the Year award and was named Male Vocalist of the Year by both. In 2012, he was bestowed the Grammy’s most prestigious honor, a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Read more

Tags

9
Profile

Glen Campbell: 1936-2017

Read "Glen Campbell: 1936-2017" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


“Well, that moment has come that we have known was an inevitable certainty and yet stings like a sudden catastrophe. Let the world note that a great American influence on pop music, the American Beatle, the secret link between so many artists and records that we can only marvel, has passed and cannot be replaced -my friend and brother in music, Glen Campbell." Composer Jimmy Webb, Facebook, August 8, 2017 Jimmy Webb and Glenn Campbell had ...

Read more articles

Video / DVD

Glen Campbell/Jimmy Webb In Session CD/DVD Coming on Fantasy Records

Glen Campbell/Jimmy Webb In Session CD/DVD Coming on Fantasy Records

Source: conqueroo

Glen Campbell’s recordings of Jimmy Webb’s songs have resulted in timeless, chart-topping hits like “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Wichita Lineman,” “Galveston,” and “Where’s the Playground Susie,” among others. The two have performed countless times together over the years, though recordings of their live appearances have been a scarcity — until now, with the release of this two-disc In Session CD/DVD on the Fantasy Records label, scheduled for September 25, 2012. In Session was taped in 1983 in ...

109

Recording

Glen Campbell, Bill Medley, Roches, Grateful Dead Headline Real Gone's January Releases

Glen Campbell, Bill Medley, Roches, Grateful Dead Headline Real Gone's January Releases

Source: conqueroo

Glen Campbell's 1975 Live in Japan was never released in the U.S., while Bill Medley twofer chronicles his late '60s post-Righteous Brothers solo career LOS ANGELES, Calif.—A never-before-released Glen Campbell live album, Bill Medley's post-Righteous Brothers solo albums for MGM, a 1975 album by Maggie & Terre Roche of the Roches, a retrospective of country singer Jody Miller's Epic Records years and two new Dick's Picks volumes from the Grateful Dead headline the January 2012 lineup for Real Gone Music ...

81

Performance / Tour

Glen Campbell Gives the Velvet Underground a Go

Glen Campbell Gives the Velvet Underground a Go

Source: Michael Ricci

GLEN CAMPBELL singing the music of Green Day and the Velvet Underground may not top the list of Great Moments in Pop Weirdness -- that'd go to Pat Boone's heavy metal phase a decade ago when he got hip to Metallica and Alice Cooper. But it's close. Meet Glen Campbell, arriving Tuesday, also lets the veteran singer and guitarist apply his signature soaring tenor and deeply twanging electric guitar to U2's “All I Want is You," the Replacements' “Sadly, Beautiful" ...

114

Performance / Tour

Glen Campbell Plays L.A.'s Troubadour

Glen Campbell Plays L.A.'s Troubadour

Source: All About Jazz

Glen Campbell, rock 'n' roller

Country star Glen Campbell will perform a rare club gig in Los Angeles on Aug. 19, the day his new CD of rock 'n' roll covers hits stores, his label said Wednesday.

Campbell, 72, will perform at the Troubadour in West Hollywood as part of a promotional schedule for his Capitol Records release Meet Glen Campbell.

The album boasts covers of U2's “All I Want Is You," Green Day's “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" ...

Videos

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.