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Learn 50 things about country musician Glen Campbell.
1. His career include twenty-one Top 40 hits with two hitting No. 1. Six Top 20 albums including chart-topper Wichita Lineman.
2. He has twenty-seven country Top 10 singles - spanning 22 years - and nine country No. 1 albums.
3. Received five Grammy Awards, three Grammy Hall of Fame honors and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, seven Academy of Country Music awards.
4. Campbell also received a 1998 Pioneer Award recognition, three American Music Awards, two Country Music Association Awards.
5. He also received a 2005 Country Music Hall of Fame induction, three Gospel Music Association Dove Awards.
6. Hosted of one of the era's most-beloved variety shows, co-star of the original "True Grit" and voice of a cherished animated rooster.
7. Today Alan Jackson, Keith Urban, Jakob Dylan and many others cite him as a primary influence and inspiration.
8. Glen Campbell's musical and entertainment lifetime, covering over five decades, is unmatched for its prolific breadth, popular appeal - and flat-out musical accomplishment and achievement.
9. His biggest run of hits ("Gentle on My Mind," "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," "Wichita Lineman," "Galveston," "Rhinestone Cowboy" and "Southern Nights" just to name a handful) put him in the pop elite of the late-'60s and early-'70s, erasing the line between pop and country and helping pave the way for generations of others.
10. His TV show, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, was a destination for the top artists of the era - but he also used the setting to show off his own skills and those of some lesser-known friends (John Hartford, Doug Dillard) in the regular "Pickin' Pit" segment with friendly folk-country cutting contests between the players.
11. The combination of talents and personality that made him a TV star enabled him to transcend eras, remaining a hit-maker across decades as well as across genres.
12. His sons Cal and Shannon and daughter Ashley became key members of his band.
13. Working with producer Julian Raymond, in 2008 he released the pointedly titled Meet Glen Campbell, an album of personalized interpretations of songs originated by such vital artists as U2, Jackson Browne, Green Day, Tom Petty, the Foo Fighters and even the Velvet Underground, with musical support from members of Jellyfish, Jane's Addiction and Cheap Trick's Robin Zander and Rick Nielsen.
14. Glen was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Undeterred, he embarked on a series of live dates that he dubbed "The Glen Campbell Goodbye Tour."
15. He was honored with a star-studded tribute at the Country Music Awards in 2011 and a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammy Awards in 2012.
16. Glen Campbell was born in Billstown, a tiny community near Delight in Pike County, Arkansas, to John Wesley and Carrie Dell (Stone) Campbell.
17. He was the seventh son of 12 children.
18. His father was a sharecropper of Scottish ancestry.
19. He started playing guitar as a youth and credits his uncle Boo for teaching him the guitar.
20. In 1954 Campbell moved to Albuquerque to join his uncle's band known as Dick Bills and the Sandia Mountain Boys.
21. He also appeared there on his uncle's radio show and on K Circle B Time, the local children's program on KOB television.
22. In 1958 Campbell formed his own band, the Western Wranglers.
23. Glen Travis Campbell is an American country music singer, guitarist, songwriter, television host, and occasional actor.
24. He is best known for a series of hits in the 1960s and 1970s, and for hosting a variety show called The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour on CBS television.
25. During his 50 years in show business, Campbell has released more than 70 albums.
26. He has sold 45 million records and accumulated 12 RIAA Gold albums, 4 Platinum albums and 1 Double-Platinum album.
27. He has placed a total of 80 different songs on either the Billboard Country Chart, Billboard Hot 100, and/or the Adult Contemporary Chart, of which 29 made the Top 10 and of which nine reached number one on at least one of those charts.
28. Campbell made history in 1967 by winning four Grammys total, in the country and pop categories.
29. For "Gentle on My Mind" he received two awards in country and western, "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" did the same in pop. T
30. Three of his early hits later won Grammy Hall of Fame Awards, while Campbell himself won the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.
31. He owns trophies for Male Vocalist of the Year from both the Country Music Association (CMA) and the Academy of Country Music (ACM), and took the CMA's top award as 1968 Entertainer of the Year.
32. In 1969 actor John Wayne picked Campbell to play alongside him in the film True Grit, which gave Campbell a Golden Globe nomination for Most Promising Newcomer.
33. Campbell sang the title song which was nominated for an Academy Award.
34. Campbell has been married four times.
35. He is the father of five sons and three daughters.
36. Campbell's eldest daughter is Debby, from his marriage to Diane Kirk.
37. After divorcing Kirk, Campbell married Billie Jean Nunley, a beautician from Carlsbad, New Mexico, who gave birth to Kelli, Travis, and Kane. They divorced in 1975.
38. Shortly after that, he married singer Mac Davis's second wife, Sarah Barg, in 1976. They had one child together (Dillon) and then divorced in 1980, three weeks after Dillon's birth.
39. Campbell has been married to Kimberly "Kim" Woollen since 1982.
40. Woollen was a Radio City Music Hall "Rockette" when she and Glen met on a blind date in 1981.
41. They have three children together, Cal, Shannon and daughter Ashley who have joined their father on stage since 2010 as part of his touring band.
42. Campbell, who was raised in the Church of Christ, and Woollen both joined a Baptist church in Phoenix.
43. In a 2008 interview they said that they have been adherents of Messianic Judaism for two decades.
44. Since 1962, Campbell has recorded and released fifty-seven studio albums and six live albums.
45. He has placed a total of eighty-two singles (one of which was a re-release) on either the Billboard Country Chart, the Billboard Hot 100, or the Adult Contemporary Chart, nine of which peaked at number one on at least one of those charts.
46. He has released fifteen video albums and has been featured in twenty-one music videos.
47. His first two music videos, "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and "Wichita Lineman", were directed by Gene Weed in 1967 and 1968 respectively.
48. Campbell released his final music video, "I'm Not Gonna Miss You", in 2014 to coincide with the release of the documentary Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me.
49. On January 15, Campbell and fellow songwriter Julian Raymond were nominated for Best Original Song at the 87th Academy Awards.
50. Campbell went on a final "Goodbye Tour", with three of his children joining him in his backup band; his last show was on November 30, 2012, in Napa, California.
Source: glencampbellmusic.com, Wikipedia.org
