Barely a yr after her 1967 vital and business smash, “Ode To Billie Joe,” Bobbie Gentry was not in Capitol Information’ good books. Her second album, the woozy and surreal The Delta Sweete, featured erotically-charged songs about band rehearsals (“Okolona River Bottom Band”) and tough, complicated songs with overlapping voices (“Reunion”). It had bombed. Bobbie was displaying a worrying tendency in the direction of not caring about business success, and so Capitol sought to workforce their wayward cost with one among their fastest-rising stars for the collaboration album Bobbie Gentry And Glen Campbell.
Like Gentry, Campbell had come from rural poverty; he had left dwelling as a teen to affix his uncle’s band, ultimately pitching up in LA to work as a extremely versatile session guitarist. He had additionally toured with The Seaside Boys within the mid-60s, subbing for Brian Wilson. Extra importantly, from Capitol’s standpoint, Campbell was sizzling: “Gentle On My Mind” and “By The Time I Get To Phoenix” had been killer slices of nation melancholia and so they had each hit huge.
Campbell and Gentry had recognized each other for a couple of years, earlier than both was well-known. The pair had already co-headlined a tour, and by its finish they had been frequently performing duets onstage (to the viewers’s delight); each had been open to Capitol’s thought of a recorded collaboration. Gentry was “loose as a goose,” Campbell has mentioned. “She wasn’t uptight. She was very easy to work with.” This easy familiarity grew to become the defining characteristic of Bobbie Gentry And Glen Campbell, launched on September 16, 1968.
A mixture of covers and originals, the album solidified Campbell’s enchantment and steered Gentry away from her extra outré impulses. Campbell contributed two elegant songs, “Less Of Me” and “(It’s Only Your) Imagination,” whereas Gentry penned one. “Mornin’ Glory,” which Gentry had initially recorded on The Delta Sweete, misplaced its former paranoid edge and, as an alternative, grew to become a paean to intimacy with Campbell. It’s a mark of the flexibility of Gentry’s songwriting that each variations are impressed.
“Little Green Apples,” “Let It Be Me,” “Heart To Heart Talk”: all are easy-listening silk, mild on the ear and good for the temper. Nevertheless, the best cowl on the album is the sunshine-pop basic “Sunday Mornin’,” initially written by Margo Guryan and made well-known by Spanky And Our Gang. On one stage, it’s a gently optimistic hum. Gentry has by no means sounded sweeter, nearly anticipating the tender vocals of Karen Carpenter, whereas Campbell employs his most honeyed harmonies as they loosen up quietly collectively over espresso.
Nevertheless, the gentility of “Sunday Mornin’” has an edge to it. There’s a particular fixed-grin really feel by the top, with the repeated “Everything’s alright,” solely heightened by Campbell asking Gentry, “Bob, did you say, ‘Everything’s alright?’” because the music fades. In 1968 America, with the continuing Vietnam conflict and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, maybe Campbell and Gentry had been disorientated like the remainder of the inhabitants, removed from satisfied that every part was alright. Underlining that is the choice to shut the album with their model of “Scarborough Fair/Canticle”: one among Paul Simon’s subtlest anti-war statements.
Bobbie Gentry And Glen Campbell was a No.1 nation album and achieved the success that Capitol had wished. The pair adopted it up with one other hit collectively, a model of The Everly Brothers’ “All I Have To Do Is Dream,” however a second duets album was shelved. For Campbell, Bobbie Gentry And Glen Campbell was a quick stop-off on a profession ticking upwards; “Wichita Lineman,” launched shortly afterwards, quickly eclipsed it. As for Gentry, the album’s legacy was trickier. She discovered it tougher to drag herself fully from its easy-listening quicksand, and none of her subsequent albums absolutely revisited The Delta Sweete’s ambition.
Bobbie Gentry And Glen Campbell is often missed, nevertheless it’s unfair to dismiss the album as a water-treading train. It comprises a few of the smoothest vocal performances ever laid down by both Gentry or Campbell and, realizing the character of every, maybe a touch of riot spiking its saccharine.
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