Glen Campbell Opened the Door the Genre Spent a Decade Arguing About

In 1967, Glen Campbell won four Grammy Awards in a single night, two in country and two in pop, and Nashville has been sorting through the implications ever since. The country categories went to "Gentle on My Mind," John Hartford's rambling, open-road meditation that Campbell recorded with producer Al De Lory. The pop categories went to "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," Jimmy Webb's quietly devastating song of departure. Two different awards shows, two different genres, one man. The crossover question that would consume country music through the 1970s did not begin in a boardroom or a radio programmer's office. It began in a recording session, with a sharecropper's son from Delight, Arkansas, who happened to be the best guitarist in Los Angeles.

Before he was a solo star, Campbell was a Wrecking Crew session musician, the uncredited backbone of dozens of hits. Getting his start as a session guitarist, Glen Campbell had a hand in classic tracks such as Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried" and "Strangers in the Night" by Frank Sinatra. That biography matters because it shaped what he understood music to be: not a genre boundary but a set of skills applied to the best song in the room. Born in Billstown, Arkansas, Campbell began his professional career as a studio musician in Los Angeles, spending several years playing with the group of instrumentalists later known as the Wrecking Crew. When he finally stepped to the front of the room as a solo artist, he carried both worlds with him, the country phrasing he grew up on and the pop production sophistication he had spent years helping build for other people.

The record that crystallized all of this was "Wichita Lineman," released in October 1968. "Wichita Lineman" is a 1968 song written by Jimmy Webb for American country music artist Glen Campbell, who recorded it backed by members of the Wrecking Crew. Produced by Al De Lory and recorded with the legendary Los Angeles studio musicians the Wrecking Crew, including Al Casey, James Burton, Carol Kaye, Don Bagley, Jim Gordon, and Al De Lory himself, the multimillion-selling "Wichita Lineman" was a massive crossover hit for Campbell that went to No. 3 on the pop chart and topped the country and adult contemporary charts for weeks. The song arrived unfinished. Webb had not written a third verse and warned De Lory as much. Webb's concerns over his song's shortcomings were quickly addressed in the studio by adding a tremolo-infused Dano bass melodic interlude performed by Campbell, who had first made his reputation in the music industry as a session guitarist with the prolific but uncredited group of Los Angeles backing musicians known today as the Wrecking Crew, many of whom played on the recording. The gap where a verse should have been became something stranger and more affecting: a guitar solo that felt like longing itself, unresolved and ongoing. Widely covered by other artists, it has been called "the first existential country song." Bob Dylan would later call it the greatest song ever written. The song is a country record about a working man's loneliness, and it charted at number three pop. The two facts do not contradict each other. That was the point.

What Campbell represented was a genuine synthesis, not a dilution. Jimmy 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." Campbell made history by winning a Grammy in both country and pop categories in 1967, with his "Gentle On My Mind" gaining country honors and "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" winning in the pop category. The CMA named him Entertainer of the Year and Male Vocalist of the Year in 1968. In 1968, one of his biggest years, he outsold the Beatles. And then came the television show. The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour aired on CBS from 1969 to 1972, featuring musical performances, comedy sketches, and guest appearances by major artists across multiple genres. 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. Campbell told TV Guide in 1969, "The change that has come over country music lately is simple. They're not shuckin' it right off the cob any more. I think the public is getting tired of all that crazy acid rock and wants to get back to good melodies. Country music has more impact now, because it's earthy material, stories of things that happen to everyday people. I call it 'People Music.'" It was a generous and optimistic reading of the moment. The genre was not yet sure it agreed.

The argument that Campbell had quietly started came to a head in October 1974, at the 8th Annual CMA Awards, hosted by Johnny Cash at the Grand Ole Opry House. In 1974, Newton-John was named the Country Music Association Female Vocalist of the Year, a designation which made her the first British singer to have won the award, and the title also meant she defeated more established Nashville-based nominees Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, and Tanya Tucker, as well as Canadian artist Anne Murray. Born in England and raised in Australia, the singer didn't even record her country-inflected pop tunes in Nashville, but in London. The traditionalists' frustration, building for years, found a target. A firestorm erupted, and many traditional country stars met at the house of George Jones and Tammy Wynette and decided to form ACE, or the Association of Country Entertainers, to attempt to fight the influx of pop stars into the genre. The new group consisted mostly of Grand Ole Opry members, names like Dolly Parton, Barbara Mandrell, Hank Snow, Porter Wagoner, Dottie West, Faron Young, Conway Twitty, Brenda Lee, and Ernest Tubb. ACE's stated goal was to preserve the identity of country music as a separate and distinct form of entertainment. The following year, when John Denver won CMA Entertainer of the Year, reigning Entertainer of the Year Charlie Rich presented the award to his successor and, as he read Denver's name, set fire to the envelope with a cigarette lighter.

The irony is that many of ACE's own members had themselves made records that leaned toward pop production. Several of the charter members of ACE fit that description themselves, walking the line between country and pop. The protest was real, but the line being defended was already blurry. Campbell, who had started all of this, kept recording. He triumphantly reaffirmed his standing as a crossover music star with "Rhinestone Cowboy," which topped the U.S. country and pop charts in 1975. "Southern Nights," by Allen Toussaint, his other number one pop-rock-country crossover hit, was generated with the help of Jimmy Webb and Jerry Reed, who inspired the famous guitar lick introduction to the song, which was the most-played jukebox number of 1977. He never stopped being a country artist. He also never stopped being something more than that, and the genre never quite resolved whether that was a gift or a problem. The question Campbell posed with a Webb song and a Wrecking Crew session in 1968 is still, in different forms, being asked today. The answer he gave was the music itself.