Glen Campbell (born April 22, 1936) is an American pop- country singer, best known for a series of hits in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as for hosting a television variety show.
Campbell is a native of Delight, Arkansas and began playing the guitar as a youth without ever learning to read music. By the time he was eighteen, Campbell was touring the south as part of the "Western Wranglers". In 1958, Campbell moved to Los Angeles to become a session musician.
Campbell's period as a session musician was successful, and he played with Bobby Darin, Rick Nelson, The Beach Boys (for which he was a touring member for a while in 1965), Merle Haggard, The Monkees, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, The Association, and The Mamas & the Papas, among others. His debut single was the moderate success "Turn Around, Look at Me." "Too Late to Worry — Too Blue to Cry" and "Kentucky Means Paradise" were similarly popular within only a small section of the country audience. By 1967, Campbell was ready to break through to the mainstream with "Gentle on My Mind" (written by John Hartford) and "I Wanna Live" in 1968 (see 1968 in music).
Campbell's biggest hits in 1968– 1969 came on evocative songs written by Jimmy Webb: "By the Time I Get to Phoenix", " Wichita Lineman," "Where's The Playground Suzie?", and "Galveston". Campbell's voice and phrasing conveyed the songs' emotional content perfectly. The pair's tunefully sublime partnership is nicely chronicled on the 1974 album Reunion: The Songs of Jimmy Webb.
