{"id":771,"date":"2021-11-22T08:24:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-22T08:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drmirkin.com\/2017\/08\/20\/glen-campbells-dementia\/"},"modified":"2021-11-23T21:00:50","modified_gmt":"2021-11-23T21:00:50","slug":"glen-campbells-dementia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/?p=771","title":{"rendered":"Glen Campbell’s Dementia"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\"GlenGlen Campbell was the son of a sharecropper who went from childhood poverty to wealth and world fame as a country singer, but he spent his last several years suffering from dementia and died from its complications at age 81 on August 8, 2017.<\/div>\n
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He won five Grammys, sold more than 45 million records, had 12 gold albums and 75 chart hits and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2005. He appeared in several movies including True Grit<\/em> with John Wayne, and each week from 1969 to 1972, 50 million people listened to the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour<\/em> on CBS television. \u00a0His best-known hits include Wichita Lineman, By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Galveston, Southern Nights<\/em> and Rhinestone Cowboy<\/em>.<\/div>\n
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Early Life and Career<\/strong><\/div>\n
He was born on April 22, 1936, at the height of the great depression in rural Arkansas, where his father sharecropped 120 acres of cotton. He was the seventh son in a family that was so poor that they had no electricity and all 12 children had to pick cotton in the fields. When he was four, his uncle bought him a $5 guitar from Sears Roebuck and taught him basic guitar playing. \u00a0He never had any formal music training but by age six, he was playing and singing on local radio stations and in his church. \u00a0At age 14, he quit school and worked in Houston with his brothers installing insulation and at a gas station. At age 17, he moved to Albuquerque to join his uncle’s band. \u00a0There he met and married his first wife, 16-year-old Diane Kirk. \u00a0They divorced four years later.<\/div>\n
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At age 22, in 1958, he formed his own band, the Western Wranglers. That same year, he moved to Los Angeles and played in several bands. He never learned how to read music, but by age 26 he had taught himself to play the banjo, mandolin and bass as well as the guitar, and was good enough to play background music for records made by Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Ricky Nelson, Dean Martin, and Nat King Cole. \u00a0In 1964, at age 28, he played on tour with the Beach Boys. In 1969, his Gentle on My Mind<\/em> was a best seller that made him so popular that all of his concerts would sell out. \u00a0That same year The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour<\/em> became a top show on CBS television. \u00a0He was now a national celebrity and was asked to perform at the White House for President Richard M. Nixon and in London for Queen Elizabeth II.<\/div>\n
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