Who recorded it first

Rhinestone Cowboy

Not a Glen Campbell original — Larry Weiss recorded it first, in 1974

Glen Campbell’s 1975 recording is so completely his that most listeners assume it began with him. It did not. “Rhinestone Cowboy” was written by Larry Weiss, who recorded it himself and released it in 1974 on his 20th Century Records album Black and Blue Suite. Weiss’s version went almost nowhere — No. 24 on the Billboard adult contemporary chart in the US and No. 71 in Australia in August 1974, with no crossover to pop or country — but Campbell heard it on the radio in late 1974 and learned it while touring Australia.

The record

Who recorded it first

Record
Rhinestone Cowboy
First recorded by
Larry Weiss
First released
1974, on Black and Blue Suite (20th Century Records)
Written by
Larry Weiss

Released Released in 1974 on Larry Weiss’s album Black and Blue Suite (20th Century Records), and issued as a single from it.

Charted No. 24 on the Billboard adult contemporary chart in the US and No. 71 in Australia in August 1974 — a modest showing that never crossed to pop or country, which is why almost nobody has heard it.

Hear Larry Weiss’s original 1974 recording, from Black and Blue Suite www.youtube.com · Auto-generated “Larry Weiss - Topic” channel upload, described as “Provided to YouTube by Universal Music Group,” album Black And Blue Suite, ℗ 1974. Its running time (3:38–3:39) matches the 3:40 length MusicBrainz records for the 1974 Black & Blue Suite recording, so this is the original take and not a later re-cut.

How the cover came about

Weiss’s own recording opens Black and Blue Suite; MusicBrainz ties the 3:40 recording to the 1974 release ↗.

Campbell heard the record on the radio in late 1974 and learned it during a tour of Australia; on his return he was pitched the same song in Al Coury’s office at Capitol — the sequence set out in the song’s article ↗.

Weiss had already written 1960s hits ↗ including “Bend Me, Shape Me” and “Hi Ho Silver Lining” before this one.

One caveat if you follow the work link below: MusicBrainz carries a stray 1969 date on an Al Hirt & Ace Cannon track, from the release Help Me Make It Through the Night — a record named for a song Kris Kristofferson did not write until 1970. It is a database date error, not a recording that predates Weiss.

MusicBrainz: every recorded version of the work
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Fact-check

The record, straightened out

Campbell’s 1975 single is one of the most recognisable country-pop records ever made, and it is routinely treated as the song’s point of origin. The confusion is chronological, not moral — Campbell never claimed the song as his own, and credited Weiss’s record as where he found it.

The beliefCover, 1975

Glen Campbell

His Capitol single, released 26 May 1975, topped the Billboard Hot 100 and the country chart and became his signature song — which is why listeners assume it started with him.

The originalFirst recording, 1974

Larry Weiss

Weiss recorded it himself and released it on Black and Blue Suite (20th Century Records) in 1974, a year before Campbell’s version.

The writerWords and music

Larry Weiss

Weiss is credited as both composer and lyricist. Here the writer and the first recording artist are the same person.

Written and first recorded by Larry Weiss in 1974; made famous by Glen Campbell in 1975.

Context

Why the cover swallowed the original

The interesting question is not why Campbell had the hit — it is why Weiss did not. Weiss made a songwriter’s record: Black and Blue Suite was an album of his own material, issued by 20th Century, and it moved as songwriters’ albums usually move, which is to say barely. In Weiss’s hands it reached No. 24 on the Billboard adult contemporary chart and No. 71 in Australia in August 1974, and got no further.

What changed was not the song but the voice attached to it. Campbell had spent the late 1960s and early 1970s becoming a household face through The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, and he heard in the lyric something close to his own biography — a performer who had come near to being dropped and kept going. Lambert and Potter gave it a lush pop-country arrangement, Capitol pushed it, and it crossed over completely: No. 1 country, No. 1 pop, No. 4 in the UK, and, by the Billboard sales figures cited in his Wikipedia entry ↗, his biggest-selling single.

The chronology, step by step
  • 1974 — Larry Weiss writes and records “Rhinestone Cowboy” and releases it on Black and Blue Suite (20th Century Records).
  • 1974 — Weiss’s single reaches No. 24 on the Billboard adult contemporary chart and No. 71 in Australia in August; it does not cross to the pop or country charts.
  • Late 1974 — Glen Campbell hears Weiss’s recording on the radio and learns the song while touring Australia.
  • February–March 1975 — Campbell records his version at Sound Labs, Hollywood, produced by Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter.
  • 26 May 1975 — Capitol releases Campbell’s single; it tops the Billboard Hot 100 and Hot Country Singles charts and reaches No. 4 in the UK.
Campbell found the song the way any listener would — on the radio.

The original recording artist & songwriter

Larry Weiss

b. 25 March 1941, Newark, New Jersey · American songwriter and singer

Weiss was already a working songwriter long before he was a recording artist, co-writing 1960s hits including “Bend Me, Shape Me” and “Hi Ho Silver Lining” with lyricist Scott English. He moved to Los Angeles in 1971, and in 1974 released Black and Blue Suite on 20th Century Records — the album that carried his own recording of “Rhinestone Cowboy.” It is his own performance, his own song, and it is the first version to exist. He later moved to Nashville and continued writing; the song has remained the defining credit of his career.

Popularly credited as the original

Glen Campbell

22 April 1936 – 8 August 2017 · American country singer, guitarist and session musician

Campbell was one of the great American session guitarists before he was a star, and by the mid-1970s he was deep into a second act. He heard Weiss’s record on the radio in late 1974 and learned it while touring Australia, then cut his own version at Sound Labs in Hollywood in February and March 1975 with producers Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter. Capitol released it on 26 May 1975; it went to No. 1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the country chart and became his signature song. He never claimed to have written it, and credited Weiss’s record as where he found the song.