100 Greatest Songs of the 60’s #32 Glenn Campbell – Witchita Lineman

Released: 1968

It’s easy to misread Witchita Lineman as a halfway house, an unfulfilling piece of MOR long before the idea was even minted. And yet in Glenn Campbell here was a genuine country boy, one born in the height of the Depression in a dot on the map called Pike County, Arkansas. In this part of the country nobody had anything, Campbell admitting later ‘We didn’t just endure poverty, we wore it’.

As was the norm an aspiring singer took the first possible escape route available and his humble beginnings wound through Wyoming and then Alberquerque, before stints as a session musician for the likes of Frank Sinatra and Merle Haggard. Eventually he forged a modest solo career before topping the country charts in 1968 with I Wanna Live.

Crossover success for pure country artists into the pop world was relatvely rare at this point, but Campbell began a fruitful relationship with writer Jimmy Webb, first with By The Time I Get To Phoenix and then Witchita Lineman. Webb’s lyrics were almost abstract, the scattered thoughts of somebody working alone all day obsessing over a larger than life love. Campbell’s syrupy delivery helped keep it on the rails, and accordingly it made him a star. Middle of the road, yes, but a halfway house it was not.