American country & western singer Glen Campbell, circa 1967. (Photo by Silver Screen ... [+]
More than half a decade after his death, Glen Campbell has another album on the way. The legend has has posthumously teamed up with some of the biggest and most beloved musicians in the rock and country genres to rework one of his modern classics as a duets album–and it was all completed since his passing.
Titled Glen Campbell Duets - Ghost on the Canvas Sessions, the full-length is a track-for-track reworking of his album Ghost on the Canvas, only this time around, Campbell has plenty of famous friends joining him–posthumously, that is. Campbell’s vocals remain the same, but now each track is a collaboration, and the order in which the songs appear on the record has been changed to make this feel both familiar and fresh at the same time.
The new collaborative album includes duets with Brian Wilson of Beach Boys fame, Carole King, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Sting, and Dolly Parton, among others. Glen Campbell Duets - Ghost on the Canvas Sessions is scheduled to be released on April 19.
As the album was announced, Big Machine Records (the label behind the project) dropped the first two tunes from the set. “Hold On Hope” with Eric Church and “Nothing But The Whole Wide World” with Eric Clapton are both available now.
Ghost on the Canvas was released in the summer of 2011, and at the time, it was marketed as the country star’s last album. By that point, he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, which was revealed around the time the project dropped. One day after unleashing the collection, he embarked on the Glen Campbell Goodbye Tour, which ran into late 2012.
While he may have claimed that Ghost on the Canvas would be his last album, Campbell did end up releasing more music before passing away in 2017. Following his “goodbye” effort, he also released Glen Campbell and Jimmy Webb in Session, See You There, and Adiós, which would wind up being his final original recording.
In his final years, Campbell experienced something of a career boom, as many fans and people in the country music industry recognized that he wouldn’t be around much longer. One of his final works, "I'm Not Gonna Miss You" from his documentary I’ll Be Me, earned the superstar and songwriter Julian Raymond a Grammy for Best Country Song. They were also nominated for the Best Original Song Academy Award.
