GLEN CAMPBELL

(22 April 1936 - 8 August 2017)

The American singer and musician Glen Campbell, who has died aged 81 following complications with Alzheimer’s, was mainly involved in the music business but appeared occasionally in films and on many television shows. He began his career as a studio guitarist accompanying the likes of The Beach Boys, Nat ‘King’ Cole, Frankie Laine, Ricky Nelson, Judy Garland, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. As a solo singer he had hits with ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’, ‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix’, ‘Wichita Lineman’, ‘Galveston,’ etc, while many of his recordings from the mid-1960s onwards were used on television programmes and on the soundtracks of films. As an actor Campbell appeared in Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965) with Steve McQueen and Lee Remick, The Cool Ones with Roddy McDowall, True Grit, with John Wayne and Kim Darby, Norwood, with Kim Darby again, Any Which Way You Can, with Clint Eastwood, and Uphill All the Way, plus some TV movies. In his time he sold 40 million records, received twelve gold discs and was nominated for an Academy Award for the documentary Glen Campbell: ‘I’ll Be Me (2014) amongst many other awards and nominations. Glen Campbell had four wives and eight children.

MICHAEL DARVELL