Flashback: Watch Glen Campbell and Bobbie Gentry's Dreamy 'Let It Be Me' (2024)

With Glen Campbell and Bobbie Gentry – not to mention Merle Haggard and Buck Owens – on Capitol Records in the late Sixties, the label was a country-music powerhouse. And while Gentry had soared to the top of the pop and country charts with her “Ode to Billie Joe,” Campbell‘s recorded output was almost unprecedented, with nearly everything he cut crossing over from country to pop to the adult contemporary charts and back again.

Both Campbell and Gentry had their first Number One albums in 1967, with Gentle on My Mind and Ode to Billie Joe, respectively, but by the time Capitol put the two together in the recording studio in the spring of 1968, Campbell had already taken four LPs to the top of the charts. In October 1968, his fifth chart-topper would also become Gentry’s second, as Bobbie Gentry & Glen Campbellbecame the first-ever country album by a duo to top the Billboard chart. Campbell, in fact, had held four of the top five positions on the chart a week earlier, setting yet another astonishing record.

While “Less of Me,” the pair’s first single from their collaborative project, stalled outside the country Top 40, the next release was a Top 40 pop hit and Top 15 country single. It was also the first of two Everly Brothers remakes they would hit with as a duo. “Let It Be Me” was an intimately romantic tune popularized in the mid-Fifties in France as “Je t’appartiens.” To date, dozens of artists have recorded the song, and it’s also had additional life as a popular wedding tune. Released by the Everlys late in 1959, it has since been a hit for Betty Everett and Jerry Butler on the pop and R&B charts, and in 1982 was a minor Top 40 pop and Number Two country hit for Willie Nelson. In 1976, Bobby Goldsboro sang it with Dolly Parton on her syndicated TV series, and two years later, Ray Charles performed it on a Johnny Cash special.

In this clip fromThe Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, the affecting performance of “Let It Be Me” from Campbell and Gentry is set against an autumnal backdrop and preceded by a snippet of a 2007 interview with the singer-guitarist reminiscing about his collaborations with Gentry.

Additionally, 49 years ago this week in 1969, the pair would return to Capitol studios for another duet on yet another Everly Brothers classic, “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” a Top 10 hit for them in 1970. Glen Campbell, while continuing his solo career, would occasionally team with other artists throughout his life, scoring hit duets with Anne Murray, Rita Coolidge, Steve Wariner, Mel Tillis and Tanya Tucker. For several years, he also performed “Let It Be Me” in his live shows with daughter Debby Campbell. But for the superstar entertainer, who died last August after battling Alzheimer’s, their duets LP was obviously a career highlight. “It’s one of my favorite albums to play in the car on CD,” Campbell says in the accompanying interview.