The Life of Glen Campbell

Chapter One

Delight, Arkansas

Glen Travis Campbell was born on April 22, 1936 near Delight, Arkansas, the seventh son in a sharecropping family of twelve children. Money was scarce; music was not. The Campbells sang in church, and when Glen was still a small boy his father ordered him a cheap mail-order guitar. He never really put it down. By his teens he could outplay grown men at local dances, and he learned the way most country pickers of his generation did: by ear, by radio, and by relentless practice. (Starting a young player today is a lot easier. Our editors keep a guide to beginner acoustic guitars worth handing down.)

He left Arkansas as a teenager to play in his uncle's band in Albuquerque, and in 1960 he made the leap that changed everything: Los Angeles, with about $300 in his pocket and a publishing job that paid the rent while he chased session work.

Chapter Two

The Wrecking Crew years

Within a couple of years Campbell was one of the busiest guitarists in Hollywood, part of the informal circle of session players later celebrated as the Wrecking Crew. The list of records with his fingerprints reads like a jukebox: sessions for Frank Sinatra (that guitar figure on "Strangers in the Night" is his), Elvis Presley, Dean Martin, Merle Haggard, the Monkees, and the Beach Boys, including the landmark Pet Sounds sessions.

Brian Wilson trusted him enough that when Wilson stopped touring in late 1964, Glen took his place on the road as a Beach Boy, singing the high parts and holding down the bass. He subbed in the touring band and then went right back to the studio grind, at times playing on a dozen sessions a week. Guitarists still study his clean, melodic style; if you want to chase it, start with our guitar knowledge base and a good electric guitar.

Chapter Three

From sideman to superstar

The solo breakthrough came in 1967 with "Gentle on My Mind" and "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," a pairing that made history: Campbell became the first artist to win Grammy awards in both the country and pop categories in the same year. Jimmy Webb's "Wichita Lineman" followed in 1968 and "Galveston" in 1969, records that blurred the line between country and pop so gracefully that radio simply played them everywhere.

Television made him family. The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour ran from 1969 to 1972 and at its peak reached 50 million viewers a week, an audience bigger than most Super Bowls draw today. The same year the show launched, he starred opposite John Wayne in True Grit and sang its Oscar-nominated title song.

Chapter Four

Rhinestone Cowboy

The hits kept coming through the 1970s. "Rhinestone Cowboy" topped both the pop and country charts in 1975 and became his signature; "Southern Nights" repeated the feat in 1977. Across his career he sold more than 45 million records, won Grammys, American Music Awards, and CMA honors including Entertainer of the Year, played the White House four times, and performed privately for the British royal family. In the 1990s he settled into his own theater in Branson, Missouri, and in 2005 the Country Music Hall of Fame called his name.

Chapter Five

The long goodbye

In June 2011, Campbell announced he had Alzheimer's disease, and then did something remarkable: instead of retreating, he recorded Ghost on the Canvas and took his family band, daughter Ashley among them, on a farewell tour that stretched to 151 shows. The 2014 documentary Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me chronicled that tour with unflinching honesty and helped change the public conversation about Alzheimer's. Its closing song, "I'm Not Gonna Miss You," won a Grammy and earned an Academy Award nomination.

His final studio album, Adios, arrived in June 2017. Glen Campbell died in Nashville on August 8, 2017, at 81. The Alzheimer's Association honored his courage, his peers staged an all-star CMA tribute, and the records, as they always will, kept playing.