Jimmy Layne Webb (born August 15, 1946) is an American songwriter, composer, and singer. He achieved success at an early age, winning the Grammy Award for Song of the Year at the age of 21.
Webb has written multiple platinum-selling songs, including "Up, Up and Away", "By the Time I Get to Phoenix", "MacArthur Park", "Wichita Lineman", "Worst That Could Happen", "Galveston", and "All I Know". He had successful collaborations with Glen Campbell, Michael Feinstein, Linda Ronstadt, the 5th Dimension, the Highwaymen, the Supremes, Art Garfunkel, Richard Harris, and Carly Simon.
Webb was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1986 and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1990. He received the National Academy of Songwriters Lifetime Achievement Award in 1993, the Songwriters Hall of Fame Johnny Mercer Award in 2003, the ASCAP "Voice of Music" Award in 2006 and the Ivor Novello Special International Award in 2012. According to BMI, his song "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" was the third most performed song in the 50 years between 1940 and 1990. Webb is the only artist ever to receive Grammy Awards for music, lyrics and orchestration.
Webb was born on August 15, 1946, in Elk City, Oklahoma, and raised in Laverne, Oklahoma. He grew up in a religiously conservative family; His father, Robert Lee Webb, was a Baptist minister and veteran of the United States Marine Corps who presided over rural churches in southwestern Oklahoma and west Texas. With his mother's encouragement, Webb learned piano and organ and by the age of 12 was playing in the choir of his father's churches, accompanied by his father on guitar and his mother on accordion. His father restricted radio listening to country music and white gospel.
During the late 1950s, Webb began applying his creativity to the music he was playing at his father's church, frequently improvising and rearranging the hymns. He began to write religious songs at this time, but his musical direction was soon influenced by the new music being played on the radio, including the music of Elvis Presley. In 1961, at the age of 14, he bought his first record, "Turn Around, Look at Me", by Glen Campbell. Webb said he was drawn to the singer's distinctive voice and they became friends a few years later.
In 1964, Webb and his family moved to Southern California, where he attended San Bernardino Valley College, studying music. During this time, he lived in Colton, with his family. Following the death of his mother, Sylvia, in 1964, his father made plans to return to Oklahoma. Webb decided to stay in California to continue his music studies and to pursue a career as a songwriter in Los Angeles. He would later recall his father warning him about his musical aspirations, saying that "This songwriting thing is going to break your heart." Seeing that his son was determined, however, he gave him $40, saying "It's not much, but it's all I have."
After transcribing other people's music for a small music publisher in Hollywood, Webb was signed to a songwriting contract with Jobete Music, the publishing arm of Motown Records. The first commercial recording of a Jimmy Webb song was "My Christmas Tree" by The Supremes, which appeared on their 1965 Merry Christmas album. The following year, Webb met singer and producer Johnny Rivers, who signed him to a publishing deal and recorded his song "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" on his 1966 album Changes.
In 1967, Rivers released Rewind, an album featuring seven Webb songs, including "Do What You Gotta Do" and "Tunesmith", a song also recorded that year by Vikki Carr for her album It Must Be Him. That same year, Rivers turned to Webb for material for a new group Rivers was producing called the 5th Dimension. Webb contributed five songs to their debut album, Up, Up and Away, including the title track, which was released as a single in May 1967 and reached the Top Ten. The group's follow-up album, The Magic Garden, was also released in 1967 and featured eleven additional Webb songs, including "Worst That Could Happen".
In November 1967, Glen Campbell released his version of "By the Time I Get to Phoenix", which reached number 26. At the 1968 Grammy Awards, "Up, Up and Away" was named Record of the Year (1967) and Song of the Year (1967). "Up, Up and Away" and "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" received eight Grammy Awards between them.
In 1968, Time acknowledged Webb's range, proficiency, and "gift for strong, varied rhythms, inventive structures, and rich, sometimes surprising harmonies". That year, the string of successful Webb songs continued with the 5th Dimension's "Paper Cup" and "Carpet Man" reaching the Top 40, Glen Campbell's "Wichita Lineman" selling over a million copies, and Johnny Maestro & the Brooklyn Bridge scoring a gold record with "Worst That Could Happen", a song originally recorded by the 5th Dimension.
Webb formed his own production and publishing company that year, Canopy, and scored a hit with its first project, an unlikely album with Irish actor Richard Harris singing an album of all Webb songs. One of the songs, "MacArthur Park", was a long, complex piece with multiple movements that was originally rejected by the group The Association. Despite the song's seven minutes and twenty-one seconds length, Harris's version reached No. 2 on the Hot 100 on June 22, 1968, and No. 4 on the UK Singles Chart on July 24. The album, A Tramp Shining, stayed on the charts for almost a year. Webb and Harris produced a follow-up album, The Yard Went On Forever, which was also successful.
Further raising Webb's stature as a songwriter, "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" was performed by Frank Sinatra on the latter's 1968 album Cycles. Sinatra would go on to praise "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" as "the greatest torch song ever written".
At the 1969 Grammy Awards, Webb accepted awards for "By the Time I Get to Phoenix", "Wichita Lineman", and "MacArthur Park". In 2019 "Wichita Lineman" was added to the National Recording Registry.
In 1969, Glen Campbell continued the streak of Webb hits with the gold record "Galveston" and "Where's the Playground Susie". Webb and Campbell had first met during the production of a General Motors commercial. Webb arrived at the recording session with his Beatle-length hair and approached the conservative singer, who looked up from his guitar and said, "Get a haircut." That same year, two Webb songs became hits for the second time with Isaac Hayes' soulful version of "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and Waylon Jennings' Grammy-winning country version of "MacArthur Park". On Frank Sinatra's 1969 album My Way, the singer dove deeper into Webb's songbook with a version of "Didn't We?", a number that was originally done by Richard Harris in 1968 and released as the B-side of "MacArthur Park". Webb finished the year by writing, arranging, and producing Thelma Houston's first album, Sunshower.
As the decade came to a close, so too did Webb's string of hit singles. He began to withdraw from the formulaic process in which he worked and began to experiment with his music. He started work on a semi-autobiographical Broadway musical called His Own Dark City, which reflected the emotional displacement he felt at the time. He also wrote music for the films How Sweet It Is! and Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here.
Singer-songwriter years, 1970–1982
Webb's career as a singer-songwriter got off to a rough start with the "counterfeit" album Jim Webb Sings Jim Webb, released by Epic Records in 1968. According to Webb, the album was produced "by a bunch of ruffians from some old demos of mine and tarted up to sound like 'MacArthur Park'". Beginning in 1970, Webb released six original albums of his own songs: Words and Music (1970), And So: On (1971), Letters (1972), Land's End (1974), El Mirage (1977), and Angel Heart (1982). Despite the critical reception that followed each of these projects, Webb has never been as successful as a performer as he has been as a songwriter and arranger. Each album was noted for its inventive music and memorable lyrics.