Glen Campbell Birthplace — Billstown, Arkansas

Glen Campbell was born on April 22, 1936, in the Billstown community near Delight in Pike County, Arkansas — deep in the Ouachita Mountains of southwest Arkansas — the seventh son of a sharecropper. He taught himself guitar by ear as a child and was performing professionally in Albuquerque by his late teens before moving to Los Angeles in 1960, where he became one of the most in-demand session guitarists in the city. As a member of the Wrecking Crew, Campbell played on records by the Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Merle Haggard, Rick Nelson, and hundreds of others before his own recording career took off.

Campbell's solo hits — 'Gentle on My Mind,' 'By the Time I Get to Phoenix,' 'Wichita Lineman,' 'Galveston,' 'Rhinestone Cowboy,' 'Southern Nights' — established him as one of the best-selling country-pop artists of the late 1960s and 1970s. His television show The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour (1969–72) brought country music into middle-class American living rooms with considerable success. 'Wichita Lineman,' written by Jimmy Webb, is frequently cited as one of the greatest pop songs ever written.

Delight, Arkansas, has embraced Campbell's legacy with a small museum and annual celebration. Pike County in the Ouachita Mountains is beautiful, forested hill country — the landscape of a very different Arkansas from the Delta flatlands. Campbell died in Nashville in August 2017 from Alzheimer's disease, having documented his diagnosis and decline with remarkable courage in the film I'll Be Me (2014).