Sunday Music – Wichita Lineman

Posted on Sun 10/26/2014 by TonyfromOz

Today’s music video is Wichita Lineman, played here in this clip by the American singer Glen Campbell.

This video was posted to You Tube by jeffcher10

Have you ever wondered about the process that goes into making a hit song. Writers get their inspiration from everywhere, not just sitting down and working at it, but from everywhere.

Such is the case also with this song.

It was written by Jimmy Webb in 1968. Jim was now in the middle of a purple patch of songs that were hits, and, as a songwriter, had already had a number of hits, nearly all of them for other artists and bands, spread across the three or four years prior to writing this song. This was his second hit with Glen Campbell, and the first was the monster song By The Time I Get To Phoenix, recorded by Campbell a year earlier, a song earlier recorded by Johnny Rivers, who made little impression with it, and then Glen Campbell made it absolutely huge.

Jim met Glen during a recording session for a TV ad, and ended up writing four of Glen’s hits, and this was one of them.

While Glen’s first breakthrough was that first Jim Webb song in 1967, he had already been in the music industry for almost 15 years.

Glen came from a big family and learned to play guitar at a young age. He appeared in a number of small time bands and had recorded a few songs as a solo artist, but by far the majority of his work was as a session guitarist, but not just as any old session guitarist, but as a member of what was the most prestigious group of session musicians in the World, part of the legendary group of musicians called The Wrecking Crew, who worked out of Los Angeles. Bands and artists came from all across America, and in fact all around the World to have this famed group of musicians back them up for their latest albums.

Glen played guitar on a number of other artists and groups albums from around that era of the mid and late 60’s. One of those bands was The Beach Boys, and he played guitar on that famous album Pet Sounds. The leader of the Beach Boys, Brian Wilson, the driving force behind the band asked Glen Campbell to stand in for him as the band toured this Pet Sounds album, mainly because Brian wanted to do most of his work in the Studio, where he excelled as an arranger, writer and maker of such beautiful music from that era. So, for a number of Months, Glen toured with The Beach Boys and played on stage with the band.

He was still doing work as a session guitarist, and that was where he met Jim Webb, and that first hit for Glen as a solo artist was made.

Following that, and Glen’s second huge hit Gentle On My Mind, his career as a solo artist was now assured. He won four Grammy Awards for those two songs the year before this song I have featured today became a hit.

Jim Webb wrote the song after driving through rural Oklahoma’s Washita County. He was driving into the setting Sun down a road with endless power poles, all the same, one after the other. In the distance he noticed a lineman at the top of one of those telegraph poles, and the song came from there. The setting, Washita County was changed to Wichita, as that sounded better during the singing of the song. It’s an almost timeless song, and is so touching on so many levels, work and love and how the two mix in this situation.

While those earlier songs were huge hits on the Country charts, they only did moderately well on the mainstream charts, and this song Wichita Lineman crossed over onto those mainstream charts and became a Top Five Hit on the National Chart.

Now more than just another Country singer, Glen’s songs started to chart not only on Country Charts, but on mainstream charts as well. His next major hit that crossed over and was a huge National hit was another from Jim Webb, Galveston.

He had to wait a few more years to have a Number One mainstream song, the huge smash hit, Rhinestone Cowboy.

Glen has been a constant performer across the years and has only recently retired from the music industry, and he’s now 78 years old, which is hard to imagine really.