American songwriter, composer, and singer
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. During his career, he established himself as one of America's most successful and honored songwriter/composers. 
Webb has written numerous 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 Supremes, Art Garfunkel and Richard Harris.
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.
Early life.
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."
Career.
Early success, 1965–1969.
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 &amp; 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), "" (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.
Webb's debut album as a performer, "Words and Music", was released on Reprise Records in late 1970 to critical acclaim. "Rolling Stone" writer Jon Landau called one of the album's cuts, "P.F. Sloan", a "masterpiece [that] could not be improved upon". The album also features the ambitious song trilogy "Music for an Unmade Movie". Webb's 1971 follow-up album, "", proved equally appealing to critics. "Rolling Stone" declared the album "another impressive step in the conspiracy to recover his identity from the housewives of America and rightfully install him at the forefront of contemporary composers/performers." The album features the songs "Met Her on a Plane", "All My Love's Laughter", and "Marionette". Also in 1971, the Three Degrees are featured in the movie "The French Connection" giving a rendition of Webb's song "Everybody Gets To Go To The Moon", originally recorded in 1969 by Thelma Houston.
Webb's 1972 album "Letters", which features his own rendition of "Galveston", met with similar praise. Music critic Bruce Eder called "Letters" the "most surprising, diverse, and possibly the most satisfying of all of Jimmy Webb's early solo LPs" and "arguably the best of Webb's solo albums". In his review of the album, Peter Reilly of "Stereo Review" wrote, "Jimmy Webb is the most important pop music figure to emerge since Bob Dylan." The album also features the songs "Campo de Encino", an homage to his park-like residence in Encino, California, during the 1970s, "When Can Brown Begin", and "Piano". 
He also produced in 1972 album, "The Supremes Produced And Arranged By Jimmy Webb." for The Supremes, featuring Jean Terrell, Mary Wilson and Linda Lawrence. The album sold poorly and did not chart successfully.
In 1974, Webb released "Land's End" on Asylum Records. Unlike his previous albums, which tended to be underproduced, Webb was able to achieve a more heavily produced pop/rock sound on "Land's End", which was recorded in England with the help of an all-star session band that included Joni Mitchell, Ringo Starr, and Nigel Olsson. The album contains "a thematic consistency in that most of its songs were tales of romantic discord". While Webb continued to improve as a singer, he "still hadn't found an identity as a solo artist". The album features the songs "Ocean in His Eyes", "Just This One Time", and "Crying in My Sleep".
In 1977, Webb released "El Mirage" on Atlantic Records. Produced, arranged, and conducted by The Beatles' former producer, George Martin, the album was Webb's "most polished effort yet as a performer". William Ruhlmann observed, "These were lush tracks full of tasty playing and warm string charts on which Webb's thin tenor was buoyed by numerous background vocalists, the whole an excellent example of the style known as 'West Coast pop'." The album contains several strong compositions, including "The Highwayman", which would later become a number one country hit for Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Kris Kristofferson, who named their super group The Highwaymen after the song. Their version of "The Highwayman" won a Grammy Award for Best Country Song. "El Mirage" also features the songs "If You See Me Getting Smaller I'm Leaving", a newly arranged version of "P.F. Sloan", and "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", which had already been recorded by Joe Cocker, Glen Campbell, and Judy Collins. Despite the positive critical response to the album, "El Mirage" did not succeed in redefining Webb as a performer as he had hoped.
Webb's final solo album from this period, "Angel Heart", was released in 1982 on Lorimar Records. Like its predecessor, the album drew upon the talents of top Los Angeles session musicians to produce a classic West Coast pop sound, enhanced by guest vocal harmonies by Gerry Beckley, Michael McDonald, Graham Nash, Kenny Loggins, Daryl Hall, and Stephen Bishop. Unlike his previous solo albums, however, "Angel Heart" lacked the quality material usually associated with the composer. Apart from "Scissors Cut" and "In Cars", which were previously recorded by Art Garfunkel, the album offered few high points, despite its polished production. A decade would pass before Webb released his next solo album.
Throughout the