On This Day in 1969, Glen Campbell Was in the Middle of a Massive Seven-Month Run at No. 1

On This Day (January 12) in 1969, Glen Campbell was at the top of the country albums chart with Wichita Lineman. The album reached the top of the chart dated November 30. It remained at No. 1 until his next album, Galveston, dethroned it on April 19. Campbell’s domination of the country albums chart continued until the first week of July. All told, he was at the top of the chart for seven months, or 31 consecutive weeks.

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After around five years of releasing albums and singles, Campbell found his first major hit with his 1967 full-length album Gentle on My Mind. Its iconic title track helped the LP make its way to the top of the country chart and into the top 10 of the Hot 100. His next six studio albums reached No. 1 on the country chart.

[RELATED: On This Day in 1969, Glen Campbell Recorded a No. 1 Hit About a Homesick Soldier That Became an Unexpected Protest Song]

Campbell’s release schedule lined up perfectly to allow him to dominate the country album chart for more than half a year. First, he released Wichita Lineman in late 1968. It debuted on the chart dated November 16. Fourteen days later, it went to No. 1. Then, he released Galveston in early 1969, while his previous album was still holding the peak position. It debuted on the chart dated April 5. Like his previous release, it was only on the chart for two weeks before it reached the top.

Glen Campbell Found a Timeless Hit with “Wichita Lineman”

“Wichita Lineman” topped the chart in December 1968, a week after the album of the same name reached the top. It topped the chart for two weeks and went on to become one of Glen Campbell’s signature songs.

Jimmy Webb, the songwriter behind some of Campbell’s biggest hits, penned “Wichita Lineman.” He talked about the inspiration for the song during an interview with Songfacts. “I’ve never worked with high-tension wires or anything like that. My characters were all ordinary guys. They were all blue-collar guys who did ordinary jobs,” he said. “As Billy Joel likes to say, which is pretty accurate, ‘They’re ordinary people thinking extraordinary thoughts.’ I always appreciated that comment because I thought it was very close to what I was doing or what I was trying to do,” he added.

“I’m a songwriter and I can write about anything I want to, I feel that you should know something about what you’re doing and you should have an image and I have a very specific image of a guy I saw working up on the wires out in the Oklahoma panhandle one time with a telephone in his hand talking to somebody,” he explained. “This exquisite aesthetic balance of all these telephone poles just decreasing in size as they got further and further away from the viewer–that being me–and as I passed him, he began to diminish in size. The country is so flat, it was like this one quick snapshot of this guy rigged up on a pole with his telephone in his hand,” he continued.

“This song came about, really, from wondering what that was like, what it would be like to be working up on a telephone pole and what you would be talking about,” Webb said.

Featured Image by David Redfern/Redferns