Critical Mass

Glen Campbell says Adios with songs he always loved

Album cover for Glen Campbell's "Adios"
Album cover for Glen Campbell's "Adios"

In 1971, jazz drummer Buddy Rich went on the Mike Douglas Show and talked trash about country music.

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Book cover for Jo Nesbo's "The Thirst"

In itself, this was no big deal; Rich had a reputation for a big mouth and a lack of generosity. It's said when he called Ringo Starr "adequate, no more than that," the Beatles' drummer took it as a compliment. Rich died in 1987, and it's sad his legacy seems as much about bootlegged tapes of the profanity-laced tirades he directed at his band as his explosive, yet remarkably precise, crisp and articulate style.

But on the Mike Douglas Show, in front of co-host Barbara Feldon (who at one point tried to steer the conversation toward the regrettable lack of music education in schools) and George ("Goober Pyle") Lindsey, who was about to join the cast of Hee-Haw, Rich unloaded on a form of popular music he said was "so simple that anybody can sing it, anybody can do it, anybody can play it on one string ..."

"I think it's about time that this country grew up in its musical tastes rather than making a giant step backwards that country music is doing," Rich said. "We try very hard to do things like the moon landing ... and country music is a giant step backwards .... There has to be a higher degree of musical intelligence, and we have to start listening to better things rather than the simple things."

Rich went on to denigrate Chet Atkins, saying that it was hard to have much respect for him after listening to Charlie Christian, and Boots Randolph, the saxophone player whose "Yakety Sax" was on the charts "for like an hour-and-a-half." Rich compared Randolph unfavorably to the likes of Lester Young and Charlie Parker. But then he turned to the arguably biggest star in show business.

"I don't think you have to create too much, man, to be a hillbilly," Rich said. "The young people who may be viewing this need to realize that there's a lot more to music than just playing one chord or two chords ... If I have to listen to Glen Campbell, that's like the cowboy Wayne Newton as far as I'm concerned."

In a way, Rich's attack on Campbell makes sense. In 1971 Campbell was at the height of his popularity, the host of his own variety show The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour (which, unlike Lindsey's Mayberry R.F.D., survived CBS' "rural purge," which saw the cancellation of many shows that, according to the Museum of Broadcast Communications, featured "naive but noble 'rubes' from deep in the American heartland"). Campbell had already released more than a dozen albums, won four Grammy Awards and appeared in the movie True Grit at the request of its star, John Wayne. He'd just released his first greatest hits record.

Campbell was an exemplar of a certain kind of showbiz superstar, with his cross-pollinated career built largely on countrypolitan pop that eschewed the rawer elements of traditional country music (Rich's "hillbilly" description notwithstanding, it was a long way from the rustic yawph of Hank Williams to Campbell's creamy crooning). It wasn't difficult to imagine Campbell as a facile pretty-boy front, a creation of Jimmy Webb (who was careful never to sing his demos too well lest he be taken for a performer, not a songwriter) and producer Al De Lory.

But Rich should have known better.

Campbell may be from Arkansas (from tiny Billstown, a community outside of Delight, where he grew up the seventh of 12 children born to impoverished sharecroppers) but he is not an unsophisticated musician. He is a musical freak, a remarkably fluid guitar player with an uncanny sense of pitch and intonation. He'd played on hundreds of recording sessions as part of Los Angeles' legendary Wrecking Crew. He'd supported Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and recorded his own jazz album (1965's Dylan Jazz, a very strange and charming novelty co-produced by Leon Russell and Snuff Garrett). His primary influences on his instrument are Django Reinhardt and Barney Kessel; you can hear some Wes Montgomery in there as well.

He did his recording in Los Angeles, not Nashville.

Rich had a lot in common with Campbell; they were both preternatural talents and you'd think game might recognize game. Rich was drumming when he was 18 months old, leading his own bands by the time he was 11 -- at one point he was the second-highest paid child performer in the world after Jackie Coogan. Campbell couldn't read music but is said to have instant recall of every melody he has ever heard.

STILL HERE

Campbell is not past tense. He can't remember lyrics anymore; he's dying but not dead yet. Alzheimer's is a remarkably predictable disease, it progresses steadily and resists miracles. There's some evidence that making music might help a patient remain on a plateau longer, but the trajectory is inevitably downward.

Campbell's struggles with the disease during his final tour were documented in James Keach's 2014 documentary Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me.

Adios, billed as the singer's final studio album, was released a couple of weeks ago. Recorded in 2012 and 2013, it consists of songs -- mainly pop country standards -- that Campbell is said to have loved but never got around to recording, such as "Everybody's Talkin'," the Fred Neil song Harry Nilsson recorded for Midnight Cowboy.

It's rumored that Campbell played banjo on Nilsson's version, but I've never found any confirmation. They were friends and Campbell recorded several of Nilsson's songs. Campbell performed the song on the Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour in 1973, with the banjo accompaniment provided by Carl Jackson, a longtime friend and member of Campbell's band, who produced Adios. But on this version, Jackson had Campbell's daughter -- his god-daughter -- Ashley Campbell play the banjo part.

Adios is rife with these sort of textures. While the title track is a Jimmy Webb song originally recorded by Linda Ronstadt in 1989, its lyrics are almost too on the nose for comfort:

Our dreams of endless summer

Were just too grandiose

Adios, adios

Campbell doesn't play much, if any, guitar on this album. There are times you catch a little hesitation in his voice, which has aged into a slightly darker instrument than the one to which Rich objected. In context, listening to Adios is bittersweet because it's difficult to separate what we know of Campbell's situation and the still commanding performances. We know he was supported by his family and a few close friends, and we might imagine things were more difficult than they end up sounding.

As with all of Campbell's post-Alzheimer's diagnosis work, there is a shadow of possible exploitation that hangs over the project, but as one who has talked with Campbell's wife Kim and other family members, I'm willing to accept their contention Campbell is happiest when he's making music. They say he still sings -- the lyrics are gibberish but the notes are accurate, the tone is pure.

There are some sublime moments on this record, including Campbell's rendition of Webb's "Postcard From Paris" (originally written for and performed by John Denver) which takes on a new poignancy viewed from the singer's end-of-life perspective. There's also a cover of Jerry Reed's 1968 hit "A Thing Called Love," a tune Campbell often played in concert, and an up-tempo take on Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right."

It could be argued that 2011's marvelous Julian Raymond-produced Ghost on the Canvas was the perfect send-off, a collection of songs (most written by Campbell and Raymond) conceived as a farewell to music. But the music was still there, even after Campbell began to lose the thread. So someone put him behind a microphone and rolled tape.

Maybe even Rich could appreciate that.

SUMMER READING

I like good books that are engaging. However, I will make a little concession to expectations and hold off on reviewing Sarah Ruden's new translation of Augustine's Confessions (Modern Library, $28) and Philip Roth's Why Write? Collected Nonfiction 1960-2013 (Library of America, $35) for the time being. Instead, here are a few recent works I fairly blew through:

The Thirst, Jo Nesbo (Knopf, $26.95). Harry Hole (pronounced "Ho-leh," as you'd know if you read The Bat, which was the Norwegian Nesbo's first crime novel to be translated into English; when the detective visited Australia the locals called him "Harry Holy") returns to track a serial killer who may be pretending to be another serial killer masquerading as a "vampirist" in this Teflon-sleek (and risibly convoluted) murderer of one's leisure time. But there are moments when Nesbo seemed to be peeking into my life, such as when he has his detective musing about how he likes Haruki Murakami novels but not his book on running.

Camino Island, John Grisham (Doubleday, $28.95). I've interviewed Grisham a couple of times but I've only read a couple of his legal thrillers and a little of his nonfiction; I'm not prepared to defend or condemn his oeuvre. But I like this breezy novel, which reads like a lawyerless parody of a beach book and allows Grisham the opportunity to write about writing and -- to some extent -- comment on his place in the literary firmament. Ostensibly a heist novel about the theft of F. Scott Fitzgerald manuscripts from Princeton University, the novel actually contains very little mystery as it morphs into a comedy of manners set in a beach town populated by a rogue of a bookseller and his various writerly satellites. No one has ever compared Grisham to Evelyn Waugh, but this just might be the trigger.

Grief Cottage, Gail Godwin (Bloomsbury, $26). Another literal beach book, about a haunted 11-year-old boy who, after the death of his mother, is sent to live on the South Carolina coast with his artistic great-aunt. There he's drawn to a ruined cottage, the scene of a long-ago disaster, and the spirit that dwells within. But Grief Cottage isn't so much a ghost story as a stately meditation on loss and longing that wraps up a little too tidily at the end.

Chemistry, Weike Wang (Knopf, $24.95). While it's always dangerous to assume a first novel is autobiographical, this funny and heartbreaking deadpan story of a good Chinese-American daughter's breakdown and semi-recovery feels like it comes from a place of hard truth. Wang's unnamed narrator, a chemistry doctoral student, mirrors the author's experience. Wang, we note, seems to be doing much better now.

Wait Till You See Me Dance: Stories, Deb Olin Unferth (Graywolf, $16). A bit of a cheat for this column, as I've only read a couple of the shortest stories in this collection, which I was made aware of because my wife, Karen's, book club read it for this month. Nevertheless, you have to pay attention when someone literally drops the book they're reading to their lap and mouths "oh my God" before commanding you to read a story called "The First Full Thought of Her Life."

Oh my God. Unferth reminds me a little of Kevin Brockmeier, as she employs a casual, amiable vernacular to illuminate the ordinary horror of the everyday and the unsentimental tenderness of which our species remains capable. In other words, read this.

Email:

pmartin@arkansasonline.com

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Style on 06/18/2017

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