The Hip Hick

Assuming that you can take the country out of a country singer, there was a lot to take out of Glen Campbell. His home town, Billstown, Ark., is about as country as you can get. The downtown section still consists of a grocery store, where Rastus Williamson sits on the feed sacks and talks to Sewell and Sissy Dabbs all day long every Saturday. Color television has come to town, though -- in the form of the set that Glen gave his parents for Christmas. This week, in fact, relatives and friends will be gathered at the Campbell home to watch the premiere of a new weekly CBS program: The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour.

Best of Breed. If Billstown has not changed much in the 15 years since he left, Campbell has. His voice still flows as smoothly as freshly skimmed cream, but the twang is tuned down and the phrasing is tuned up. The result is really a mild blend of pop, country, and a touch of rock. Indeed, at 30, Campbell is the most polished and successful of a whole breed of hybrid stylists--call them hip hicks or country slickers--who have invaded the pop bestseller charts in the past few years. Such others as Roger Miller, John Hartford and Jerry Jeff Walker have also flourished there. Campbell's own record sales soared to $6,000,000 last year, with three of his albums selling to the tune of $1,000,000 each.

The rangy (6 ft.), wheat-thatched

Campbell has also developed an easygoing stage presence, and although he still laces his conversation with exuberant shouts of "wooowhee!" Billstowners would probably consider him suspiciously sophisticated. Besides having his own TV show, he has been signed to make six movies, starting with the forthcoming True Grit, a western in which he co-stars with John Wayne. In all, Campbell figures to make about $3,000,000 this year, which is mighty good for somebody who recalls that he spent most of his early life "lookin' at the north end of a southbound mule. I always thought the world was made up of countrysides and cows and horses and pigs and chickens until I left home, you know."

Hitting Paydirt. The seventh son in a farm family of eight boys and four girls, Glen began to play a guitar at the age of four, when his father through a Sears, Roebuck catalog sent for one priced at $5. He drew on whatever music was at hand: the hymns he sang in the choir at the Church of Christ, homely folk tunes, country pickin' that he heard at the county fair, and records on the radio--especially Hank Williams and Frank Sinatra. By the age of 14, he was proficient enough to say goodbye to school and begin touring the Southwest, first with an uncle's band, later with his own outfit. Many of the dates were at what he calls "dancin' and fightin' clubs," and he prudently trained himself to perform anything that a customer might request, whether it was Avalon or Tumbling Tumbleweeds or a jazz tune like Easy.

At 22, Campbell moved to Los Angeles, eventually gravitated to playing and singing backgrounds for recording stars such as Sinatra, Dean Martin, Elvis Presley, and the Mamas and the Papas. Despite his inability to read music, he was soon earning $75,000 a year as a busy and versatile studio musician. He occasionally made a record on his own, but he never pushed to make himself a star performer. In 1967, however, he hit paydirt with his first big hit, Gentle on My Mind, and before he could say "wooowhee!" he was host of the Smothers Brothers' summer TV show. That brought him out of the background for good.

Today, Campbell owns land in San Diego and apartment buildings in Los Angeles, golfs with Bob Hope, and once drove his own gold Cadillac. He is carefully trimmed and tailored and flashes his wide, country-boy smile with $3,000 worth of handsomely capped teeth. He has only one real concern: preserving the quality that his career was built on. "My approach is simplicity," he explains with realistic candor. "If I can just make a 40-year-old housewife put down her dish towel and say 'Oh!'--why then, man, I've got it made."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.