Glen Glenn and the half-century of reverb

PHOTO by DOMINIQUE ANGLARES

Before it was Glen Glenn, it was just Glen Troutman: a Missouri-born country singer who in the early ’50s played country dance hall shows and made the rounds on local TV stations (including Les “Carrot Top” Anderson’s County Barn Dance on channel 13, on which he appeared regularly). In 1956, when “Heartbreak Hotel” had just been released, Glenn saw Elvis Presley perform his first California show—not only saw but met Elvis backstage, and not only met but took what he claims to be the first photograph of the King on California soil. That brush with royalty ended up shaping his entire career: not long after, he switched from country to rockabilly, which according to Glenn is the only way anyone can sing rockabilly. At the record label’s insistence, “Troutman” was ditched for the catchier “Glen Glenn.”

Although he’s an unashamed Elvis fan—he routinely performs at the Elvis Honeymoon Hideaway in Palm Springs—his music defies standard Presleyan rockabilly. His early records are at times subdued: no silly vocal acrobatics, distant background vocals awash in mounds of reverb, and a loud click-clack bass chasing the chords. Other times he’s harsher, instruments and vocals pushed just beyond the mixing board’s limits, and his voice—a high tenor instead of Elvis’ characteristic baritone—barely clips the track as he sing-shouts “If I had me a woman who was big and fat/I’d jump up and down like an alley cat!” He does love better than Elvis, too: “Kathleen” pits the archetypal ’50s 1-6-4-5 progression (cf. “Why Do Fools Fall In Love?”) against a bouncy rockabilly beat and gorgeous “ooh-ahh” backing vocals as he waxes enamored over his girlfriend.

Songs like that brought him praise and a little fame. It would’ve been more but the U.S. Army called him to duty in 1958 just as his first single “Everybody’s Movin’” and the sweet-as-sugar ballad “Laurie Ann” were hitting airwaves. Glenn was stationed in Hawaii where he served quietly until he got word from the army that “Laurie Ann” was getting airplay on both Hawaii-based KULA radio and American Bandstand. “I was out there in the service club with a guitar on me,” Glenn says. “This guy comes up saying he was he was looking for a Glen Glenn: ‘We wanna put you in Special Service.’” He would serve the rest of his time playing concerts for troops stationed all over the Pacific.

By the time he was discharged—just before 1960—rockabilly was well on its way to becoming a relic. Glenn left music and got a job making missiles. It wasn’t until the ’70s when rockabilly got a shot in the arm (partially thanks to the Stray Cats, who worked Glenn’s songs into their repertoire) that Glenn got heavily back into music again. Before long he was playing all over the world.

Nowadays he’s a charming and eager-to-please 73-year-old whose rambling voice vaguely hints at his Missouri roots. He’ll excitedly go on for hours about time spent with Elvis or the tour of duty in the Pacific: as happy to talk as you are to listen. In music, his vocal range is less screaming tenor and more Johnny Cash baritone but not much else has changed. And Glen Glenn live shows are just as energetic as they ever were: he dances and jokes with the audience just as he would have 50 years ago. He hasn’t recorded anything new yet, save for the occasional guest appearance on a new rockabilly act’s record. People don’t look for new material from acts like him, he says: “Nobody wants to hear Jerry Lee Lewis’ new stuff—they just want ‘Great Balls of Fire.’ If I do anything new, it’ll be a country album.”

One of his biggest shows was in 1995, when he opened for Bob Dylan at the Palladium. He says that Dylan approached him kind of as a gesture of gratitude: around that time Dylan had been incorporating Glenn’s “Everybody’s Movin’” into his set as an opportunity to bring celeb friends like Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, and Neil Young on stage. That night was magic for him: “The only person who met Dylan that night was me and my wife, that was before the show,” he says. “As soon as he sung his last song, he was like Elvis: he went out through the back door and was gone! Jack Nicholson comes back stage saying ‘I wanna see Bob Dylan!’ And I just told him, ‘Jack, Dylan’s left the building!’”

GLEN GLENN AT THE HOOTENANY WITH BIG SANDY, DUSTY RHODES AND THE RIVER BAND AND MANY MORE OAK CANYON RANCH | 5305 SANTIAGO CANYON RD | IRVINE 92606 | 714.740.2000 | THEHOOTENANNY.COM | SAT NOON | $39.50 | ALL AGES

Tags: country, Elvis, glen glenn, hootenany, irvine, Music, rockabilly