The text messages started coming shortly after lunch Tuesday and by mid-afternoon, Jim Slone’s Blackberry was blowing up.
Friends from Tucson and beyond were reaching out to the retired Tucson radio executive with condolences following news that his lifelong friend the enduring country/pop star Glen Campbell had died in a Nashville care facility. The former Arizona resident was 81 and had suffered for years from Alzheimer’s disease.
“He was just somebody I really cared for and admired,” said Slone, 80, choking back tears. “You know when you have a connection with somebody when you meet and you shake hands and you’re friends? We had that kind of relationship.”
No cause of death was given for Campbell, the affable superstar singer of “Rhinestone Cowboy,” “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Wichita Lineman,” “Galvaston” and “Southern Nights.” Campbell announced in June 2011 that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
Campbell was among a wave of country crossover stars from the 1960s and ’70s that included Johnny Cash, Roy Clark and Kenny Rogers whose careers transcended radio, concert halls and TV. Campbell had a weekly audience of some 50 million people for the “Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour,” on CBS from 1969 to 1972; the show had a second life decades later when CMT aired reruns.
But Campbell was years away from that kind of success when Slone met the son of Arkansas sharecroppers in 1961. Campbell had just one song — “Turn Around, Look At Me” — on the radio and Slone, a DJ for a small Albuquerque country station, played it in heavy rotation.
“When I heard that song it just blew me away,” he said.
One Saturday afternoon at the station, a young man knocked on the door. It was Campbell.
“He came in and said, ‘I’m looking for Jimmy Slone,’ ” Slone recalled. “ ‘Well that’s me.’ ‘Hi, I’m Glen Campbell.’”
The meeting led to a 50-plus-year friendship that continued when Slone moved to Tucson in 1963 to take a DJ job at KHOS. The following year, he reached out to Campbell and booked him for a dance party concert in October 1964 at the old Tucson Gardens; Slone said he thinks he paid him $100. Two months later, Slone brought Campbell back again, this time to open for Arizona native Marty Robbins at the University of Arizona auditorium, now called Centennial Hall.
With just a guitar and no backing band, Campbell stunned the crowd with his version of the “William Tell Overture” and earned a standing ovation. He sang “Crying,” the Roy Orbison hit, and earned a second ovation.
“Nobody could hit the high notes outside of Orbison, but Glen hit those high notes that made you quiver,” said Slone, who turns 81 on Aug. 29.
Slone went on to own eight radio stations — five of them in Tucson — and be inducted into both the Arizona Radio Broadcasters Hall of Fame and, last year, the Country Radio Hall of Fame in Nashville.
The last time he saw Campbell was in February 2012, when the singer brought his farewell tour to Fox Tucson Theatre. Slone said security wouldn’t let anyone backstage so he reached out to Campbell’s daughter Ashley, who was in the band with brothers Cal and Shannon.
“I think she thought that I was just a guy trying to get backstage. But I had my Blackberry and I pulled up his cell phone number. She looked at it and saw that it was the right number,” Slone said.
Slone and his wife went backstage and he said that as soon as Campbell saw him, he said, “Well Jimmy Slone from Albuquerque.”
“I gave him a hug and he gave me a big hug,” Slone said. “I really didn’t think I would ever get to see him again.”
Social media reaction to Campbell’s death Tuesday included from the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, who Campbell replaced for a spell in the late 1960s.
“An incredible musician and an even better person. I’m at a loss. Love & Mercy,” Wilson tweeted.
“Heartbroken. I owe him everything I am, and everything I ever will be. He will be remembered so well and with so much love,” his daughter Ashley said via Twitter.
“The world lost a little sparkle today. Rest in rhinestoned peace, @GlenCampbell,” tweeted rising country star Kacey Musgraves.
