“By the time I get to Phoenix, she’ll be rising.” Glen Campbell’s lyrics were challenged by those who knew the geography of the United States and knew the distances involved, but who cared for the prosaic realities? Glen Campbell made a journey from an unhappy relationship into a poetic progress, “By the time I get to Albuquerque she’ll be working . . . By the time I make Oklahoma she’ll be sleeping.”

Glen Campbell helped shape a picture of America that was formed in childhood days, American cities always had …