Gentle On My Mind

I'm really not all to big on Glenn Campbell, I like some of his work but it's not like I'm going to rush around and buy an album or CD of his.Granted "Rhinestone Cowboy" comes to memory as the first song  I ever heard from him and I liked but I was all of maybe 3 years old and now I believe it would be torture for me to listen to or at the very least turn my stomach. But "Gentle on My Mind" is a beautiful classic that I  can never get tired of hearing. That one and "Galveston" and "By the Time I Get to Phoenix", but I'll save those for a later time. Oh and maybe "Wichita Lineman".

 Anyway  "Gentle on My Mind" was written and originally performed by John Hartford in 1967 and was on his second album "Earthwords & Music". John Hartford's recording was met with only moderate success, but Glen Campbell noticed it and decided to record his own version, which gave the song a wider audience. "Gentle on My Mind" went on to win 4 Grammys, two of which went to John Hartford. "Gentle on My Mind" went on to become one of the most recorded country songs of all time and the royalties brought Hartford great financial freedom. "Gentle on My Mind" went to #30 on the Billboard Country Singles chart and #62 on the Billboard Top 100 chart.

  Here is Glen campbell's version:

 John Hartman's original version:

  



 Here is a duet of them performing "Gentle on My Mind":

 GENTLE on MY MIND

 It's knowing that your door is always open and your path is free to walk

 That makes me tend to leave my sleeping bag rolled up and stashed behind your couch

And it's knowing I'm not shackled by forgotten words and bonds

 And the ink stains that have dried upon some line

 That keeps you in the back roads by the rivers of my mem'ry

 That keeps you ever gentle on my mind.

 It's not clinging to the rocks and ivy planted on their columns now that bind me

 Or something somebody said because they thought we fit together walking

 It's just knowing that the world will not be cursing or forgiving

 When I walk along some railroad track and find

 That you're moving in the back roads by the rivers of my mem'ry 

And for hours you're just gentle on my mind

 Through the wheat fields and the clothesline

And the junkyards and the highways come between us

 And some other woman's crying to her mother cause she turned and I was gone

 I might still run in silence, tears of joy stain my face

 And the summer sun might burn me til I'm blind

 But not where I can see you walking on the back roads

 By the river flowing gentle on my mind

 I dip my cup of soup back from gurgling, crackling cauldron in some train yard

 My beard of  roughen coal pile and dirty hat pulled low across my face

 Through cupped hands around a tin can I pretend you to my breast and find

 That you're wavin' from the back roads by the rivers of my mem'ry

 Ever smiling, ever gentle on my mind