AUGUST 8, 2017 GLEN CAMPBELL (b. April 22, 1936 in Delight, Arkansas) passed away

AUGUST 8, 2017 – Singer/songwriter/musician/producer/actor GLEN CAMPBELL (b. April 22, 1936 in Delight, Arkansas) passed away in a special care facility near his Nashville home after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was survived by his wife Kim Woolen, daughters Ashley, Debbie and Kelli and sons Cal, Dylan, Kane, Shannon and Travis.His family released this statement in a post to his website: “It is with the heaviest of hearts that we announce the passing of our beloved husband, father, grandfather, and legendary singer and guitarist, Glen Travis Campbell, at the age of 81, following his long and courageous battle with Alzheimer’s disease. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Glen Campbell Memorial Fund at BrightFocus Foundation through the CareLiving.org donation page.”Charlie Daniels tweeted, “Thank you Glen Campbell for sharing your talent with us for so many years. May you rest in peace my friend. You will never be forgotten.” Brad Paisley also thanked Campbell on Twitter “for the artistry, grace & class you brought to country music. You were a shining light in so many ways.” Dolly Parton released a short tribute video and tweeted that he “was one of the greatest voices of all time. I will always love you, Glen!”During his final months, Campbell was cared for by a family friend and personal sitter named Brody along with his main caregiver and wife Kim Woolen, who visited him daily. His friends and children would often spend days with him playing him his old songs. “Music utilizes all of the brain, not just one little section of it,” Woollen noted. “Everything’s firing all at once. It’s really stimulating and probably helped him plateau and not progress as quickly as he might have. I could tell from his spirits that it was good for him. It made him really happy. It was good for the whole family to continue touring and to just keep living our lives. And we hope it encourages other people to do the same.”Perhaps best known for his smash hit singles “Gentle On My Mind,” “By the Time I Get to Phoenix”, “Wichita Lineman”, “Southern Nights” and “Rhinestone Cowboy,” the artist released more than 70 albums, sold over 45 million records, and had 12 gold albums and 75 chart hits. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and won 10 Grammy Awards as well as 10 Academy of Country Music Awards.But he was also a valuable multi-instrumentalist session musician in the 1960s working with a multitude of diverse acts including Dean Martin, Merle Haggard, Nat King Cole, Bobby Darin, Ricky Nelson, Elvis Presley, The Velvet Underground, and The Mamas & the Papas. Campbell’s guitar playing can be heard on “Strangers in the Night” by Frank Sinatra, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” by The Righteous Brothers, and “I’m a Believer” by The Monkees. Due to his guitar mastery and high vocal range he was hired as a touring member of The Beach Boys for their 1964-1965 tour when Brian Wilson began his long period of reclusive inactivity. “He had that beautiful tenor with a crystal-clear guitar sound, playing lines that were so inventive,” Tom Petty told Rolling Stone during a 2011 profile of Campbell. “It moved me.”Campbell was born April 22, 1936 near the towns of Delight and Billstown, Arkansas, the seventh son in a sharecropping family of 12 kids. “We used to watch TV by candlelight,” Campbell told Rolling Stone in 2011. In his youth, Campbell started playing guitar and became obsessed with jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. He dropped out of school when he was 14 and moved to Wyoming with an uncle who was a musician, playing gigs together at rural bars. He soon moved to Los Angeles and by 1962 had solidified a spot in the Wrecking Crew, a group of session pros. In 1963 alone, he appeared on 586 cuts and countless more throughout the decade, including the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man,” Elvis Presley’s “Viva Las Vegas,” Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” and the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling.””I’d have to pick cotton for a year to make what I’d make in a week in L.A.,” he said. “I learned it was crucial to play right on the edge of the beat … It makes you drive the song more. You’re ahead of the beat, but you’re not.” Fellow Wrecking Crew member Leon Russell called Campbell “the best guitar player I’d heard before or since. Occasionally we’d play with 50 or 60 piece orchestras. His deal was he didn’t read [music], so they would play it one time for him, and he had it.”When the Beatles were on their first tour of the US, Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson needed some time off from the road, and believed Campbell was the best man to replace him. “He fit right in. His main forte is he’s a great guitar player, but he’s even a better singer than all the rest. He could sing higher than I could!” Wilson even wrote an early song, “I Guess I’m Dumb,” for Campbell, who’s first hit was a cover of Buffy Sainte-Marie’s antiwar song “Universal Soldier.” As a solo performer, Campbell had his first major hit in 1967 with “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” written by Jimmy Webb, an L.A. kid with a knack for intricate ballads. “Glen’s vocal power and technique was the perfect vehicle for these, in a way, very sentimental and romantic songs. And I think that you know we made some records that were very nearly perfect. ‘Wichita Lineman’ is a very near perfect pop record,” Webb said. “I think in the process that Glen was a prime mover in the whole creation of the country crossover phenomenon that made the careers of Kenny Rogers and some other… many other artists possible.”The tune kicked off a working relationship that included the haunting Vietnam War ballad “Galveston,” the tender “Gentle on My Mind” and “Wichita Lineman,” Campbell’s first Top 10 hit. With swelling orchestral arrangements and slick production, the songs weren’t exactly considered hip in the 60s. “They felt packaged for a middle-of-the-road, older crowd,” said Tom Petty. “At first, you go, ‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ But it was such pure, good stuff that you had to put off your prejudices and learn to love it. It taught me not to have those prejudices.” In 1967, Campbell won Grammys in both the country and pop categories.In the summer of 1968, Campbell guest hosted “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.” The successful appearance led to his own variety show, “The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour,” which he hosted from 1969 until 1972. Artists like Ray Charles, Johnny Cash and Linda Ronstadt performed on the show, which also gave a national platform to rising country stars like Willie Nelson. “He exposed us to a big part of the world that would have never had the chance to see us,” said Nelson. “He’s always been a big help to me.”A young Steve Martin was a writer on the show. “He just went along with it,” Martin said in I’ll Be Me. “He was completely game, and completely fun, and had kind of a down-home sense of humor. It was just an incredible treat for us young writers to be introduced to talent at that level at such a young age.” Campbell’s boyish charisma led John Wayne to cast him in a co-starring role in 1969’s “True Grit” and earned an Oscar nomination for singing the movie’s theme song. He later said that his own acting was so amateurish that he “gave John Wayne that push to win the Academy Award.” But the good times didn’t last: His show was canceled; his first feature film, 1970’s “Norwood,” flopped; and the hits dried up for a few years. Then, Campbell scored a smash with 1975’s “Rhinestone Cowboy.” It began a comeback that included hits “Country Boy (You Got Your Feet in L.A.”) and “Southern Nights.” The hits slowed down again in the Eighties; in the Nineties he opened up the Glen Campbell Goodtime Theatre in Branson, Missouri. After his success began to ebb in the 1990s, Campbell concentrated on performing at his theater in Branson and spent more time pursuing his passion for golf, becoming friends with shock rocker Alice Cooper with whom he often played on the course.In 2003, he was arrested for a hit-and-run, an incident that ended with him allegedly kneeing a police officer in the thigh right before he was released. Campbell pleaded guilty to extreme drunken driving and leaving the scene of an accident, and spent 10 days in jail. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall Of Fame in 2005 and the Musician’s Hall of Fame in 2007. In 2010 Campbell began having occasional trouble recalling lyrics or guitar licks.
In June 2011, Campbell announced he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease six months and embarked on a final “Goodbye Tour” with three of his children joining him in his backup band. He released his final album of original music “Ghost on the Canvas” (with guests Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins, Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick, Paul Westerberg and Jakob Dylan) and played 151 shows on his final tour. “The audience being there somehow triggers his ability to access that other part of his brain,” U2’s The Edge said. “It’s incredible.” “This tour of his just says, ‘Here I am, here’s what’s happening to me,'” former US President Bill Clinton said. “‘I’m going out with a smile on my face and a song in my heart so you will know,’ – and that may be more of his enduring legacy than all the music he made.” Campbell’s work of raising awareness of Alzheimer’s was highlighted in his 2015 documentary “Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me,” which followed the singer and his family on the tour as his memory declined.Campbell was married four times, and in the early 1980s, while battling alcoholism and cocaine addiction, he made tabloid headlines with a 15-month, high-profile relationship with country singer Tanya Tucker, who was 22 years his junior. They recorded duets and toured together and planned to marry but their 14-month affair ended after physical fights and cocaine use. Campbell’s third marriage to Sarah Davis, former wife of country singer Mac Davis, also was marred by drug abuse and drinking. In 1981, he became a born-again Christian and in 1982 married Woollen, a Radio City Music Hall Rockette, who helped Campbell clean up his life.Universal released Campbell’s final studio album “Adiós” on June 9, 2017. The 12-track compilation was recorded in 2012 in Nashville in the middle of his “Goodbye Tour.” The album features Glen singing four Jimmy Webb songs he never recorded but always loved, including the title track. Other songwriters on the album include Roger Miller, Bob Dylan, Dickey Lee, Jerry Reed, Carl Jackson, Fred Neil, Harry Nilsson and Willie Nelson who duets with Campbell on the poignant single, “Funny How Time Slips Away.”“Almost every time he sat down with a guitar, these were his go-to songs,” his daughter Ashley Campbell told Rolling Stone Country. “They were very much engrained in his memory – like, so far back that they were one of the last things he started losing.” “He had a beautiful singing voice,” Bruce Springsteen said in 2014. “Pure tone. And it was never fancy. Wasn’t singing all over the place. It was simple on the surface but there was a world of emotion underneath.”READ MORE:
http://www.glencampbell.com/GlenTravisCampbell
https://www.npr.org/artists/93589677/glen-campbell
http://www.studiotenn.com/the-glen-campbell-legacy/
https://countrymusichalloffame.org/artist/glen-campbellhttps://www.britannica.com/biography/Glen-Campbell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_Campbell