Glen said when he first heard Galveston (by Don Ho) it was in Glenn’s words, “God awful”. He called Jimmy Webb and told him he’d record it but he was going to speed up the tempo.
We all think of Viet Nam but Webb said he wrote it about a soldier in the Spanish American War.
From SongFacts:
Galveston is a city on the coast of Texas that attracts lots of hurricanes. Webb was on a beach in Galveston when he wrote this. He made up the story about a soldier in the Spanish-American war and the girl he left behind. Most songwriters never find themselves in places like Galveston or Wichita, but Webb found inspiration in the people he encountered in these places.
The Vietnam War was going on when Campbell released this. It was considered an antiwar song.
The Hawaiian singer Don Ho was the first to record this song, releasing it as the B-side of his single “Has Anybody Lost A Love?” in 1968. Ho recalled that when he appeared on Campbell’s show The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour in 1969, he gave Campbell a copy of the single and told him, “I didn’t have any luck with this, maybe you will.”
Thanks for that post! I wasn’t even born when the song was released, and I’ve never thought of it as being set during Vietnam. I always pictured a young man with a rifle in worn clothes or uniform who was away from home and fighting somewhere else in America, perhaps during the Civil War.
And Don Ho recorded it first?!? I would have never guessed that in a billion years. Campbell was right about the tempo. That and the accompaniment in the background make it flow.