Jimmy Webb - Man of Many Songs
- porter724
- Dec 28, 2025
- 11 min read
By Todd Beebe
Songwriting is an interesting art. Some people have a little knack for it, some people are great at it, and some long to be like Jimmy Webb. Jimmy seems to birth the tunes simply by being alive. He is one of the greatest songwriters of all time, and without a doubt, a walking inspiration. Jimmy Webb is best known for his numerous platinum-selling songs including "Up, Up and Away," "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," "Wichita Lineman," "Galveston," "The Worst That Could Happen," "All I Know," and "MacArthur Park.” The list of artists who've performed his songs is 100 miles long. His songs have been recorded by Glen Campbell, Michael Feinstein, Linda Ronstadt, Donna Summer, The 5th Dimension, Art Garfunkel, Richard Harris and Frank Sinatra, among others. From Joe Cocker to Glen Campbell to Guns n Roses, Jimmy's music has touched them all. The "Highwayman" song that Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings recorded–Jimmy wrote that plus countless tunes for so many others. The man is music! I spoke with Jimmy a short time ago, and had the honor of being asked to come to his sold out show at City Winery in Chicago.
We talked about everything and anything, including Jimmy's early years and his fantastic album, SlipCover.
The instrumental album is a first for Jimmy, and he presents cover versions of 10 songs by some of his friends like Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman. Using his own instrumental piano arrangements, Webb shows off the complex melodies that he says will “make you hear these musicians more as composers, than rock stars and songwriters.” His piano playing, in what he calls “this minimalist setting,” weaves together disparate influences. It draws on classical music, L.A. pop, and occasionally the fluid “slip note” style of Floyd Cramer, one of the key architects of the Nashville sound.
This is Webb’s first instrumental album. The idea behind the album began casually. Webb was visiting his friend Randy Newman, sat down at the piano, and played Newman’s “Marie.” Newman suggested that Webb record an entire solo piano album, and that notion took hold. This is a very personal album for Webb and that feeling extends onto the album cover which features a multi-media self-portrait. "For the album cover I chose to use my self-portrait, as an invitation to the audience to make this a personal experience; these are my interpretations of some of my favorites songs. You could listen as if you were hanging out in the living room with me, sharing music," explains Webb. Speaking with Jimmy, I found he has a way with words, even when he talks. His conversational vocabulary is unique and intelligent. When answering questions, you can sense that he has reflected deeply into his life, and his choice of words leave no doubt that he defines the word "songsmith." Watching Jimmy perform solo in Chicago was a real pleasure. It was amazing to watch him sit at a piano, no one else on stage, and run through his iconic songs. Just unreal.
Todd Beebe: Thanks so much for talking to me today Jimmy! You're a hero to myself and so many.
Jimmy Webb: Thank you, it's a pleasure!
TB: What is your first memory of hearing music Jimmy?
JW: I can remember when I was a child and growing up, my mom and dad were very much in love. He was a Baptist preacher. He had served for 37 months in the South Pacific as a Marine. I was born in 1946, and my earliest memories are sleeping in the back seat and listening to the voices of my parents and the music on the radio. The first song that I heard that I can still remember now, exactly the same way, was “Tara's Theme” from Gone With The Wind. It was just such an epic, soaring, aching theme, that it got stuck in my brain somehow. I still remember that as being one of the first things that I would go to the piano and try to pick out, long before my first piano lesson. "Da da da da!" (hums the tune) It was very rangy!
TB: Yes it's very catchy too!
JW: Yeah! So I can remember that, and then that evolved and pretty soon I became proactive and I wanted to turn the knobs! My father and I sort of went at it over that because he thought that, well to put it bluntly, that rock and roll was the music of the devil! We weren't allowed to dance and we weren't allowed to get too close to girls. There was all this repression in my youth, right up into my teens, because of this southern Baptist religion that my father was a disciple of.
TB: It’s easy to forget today, just how rebellious and against the grain Rock and Roll was when it first hit. Anything "shocking", today, is sometimes done so with marketing intent in order to draw more attention, which pales to the genuine shock people used to feel. Sometimes I feel like the bar of what is considered shocking is pretty high now, and we’re often left with people simply feigning shock. What did your father think of your success in the music business years later?
JW: Well he used to tell me, he'd say "Jimmy, this song writing thing, it's just gonna break your heart son. It's going to be terrible!" Because he really didn't want me to get into it. Later, to fast forward, he went to work for me. He was an A&R man at my publishing company. He discovered Tanya Tucker and sent her home and said "finish school!" (laughs)
TB: Yeah that's right, she was pretty young when she got in the business wasn't she?
JW: Yeah she was about 13. He said "you know Tanya you're great and I'd love to sign you in a few years, but you need to finish school!" (laughs)
TB: That's great!
JW: Yeah it's crazy! But, he was a decent man.
TB: How influential was the blues to you? It's a pretty basic, 1,4,5 structure for the most part. Obviously your songs are more complex than that, but did the blues have an influence on you?
JW: Well, I was just like every other kid. I wanted to be in a rock and roll band! Because that three chord pattern, as you know, there are variations on that, you know, there's different kinds of blues. So I learned to play all the different kinds and I started writing rock and roll songs when I was really really young, cause that's what I wanted to do. There's an old song called “Nobody Likes To Hear A White Boy Sing The Blues”, and I adapted that. I did a version of that called “Nobody Likes To Hear A Rich Boy Sing The Blues!” (laughs) And I had my own lyrics and everything. Then I got into Hank Williams, and my dad's favorite band was Bob Wills.
TB: Oh sure! Bob Wills was great!
JW: So I started listening to other things. Otherwise, I just would have been a very happy rock and roll piano player. I would have been very happy playing those three chords. But I started listening to all different kinds of music and realized that I liked almost all of it! I liked Classical music, Brazilian music, and Country music. My dad used to play these southern white Gospel quartets on Sunday morning, like The Statesman, The Oak Ridge Boys, The Blackwood Brothers and all those guys. I loved to listen to those guys! Then I got into the big bands. My brother Tommy and I had been named after Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey.
TB: Yeah, I've heard that. That's great!
JW: Yeah! So I sat down and I said "well if I'm named after this guy, I'm going to listen to him!" Well I got into Tommy Dorsey, I got into Jimmie Lunceford, Fats Waller, you know different little freak outs I would go on and just go crazy listening to Muggsy Spanier for like a year and then moving on to something else. But I always try to keep all the doors open and listen to everything, and most of my life I've done it and I've loved it! Philosophically I realize I should listen to everything. But there's some genres that are real hard for me to listen to. Death metal is not something that I'm really into too much.
TB: Many artists I've talked to have commented that when it comes to subject matter in songwriting, it's better to kind of deal with the dark side of life as opposed to the happy side? In my opinion you tend to come up with better material than on the happy side. How do you feel about that?
JW: Well, I think that I clearly am someone who writes from the shadows. But you find yourself, if you're writing for the movies or you're writing for Broadway, you find yourself almost being forced into writing upbeat, musical things about cats and "June is busting out all over" and you have these certain set pieces in a Broadway show that are just like, okay well this has to be the happy number! This has to be at the beginning, where we're setting the scene in this hotel in Manhattan. So to me, that kind of writing is not real writing. It's kind of executing technique and doing it in such a way that you get the desired effects. Now you've got a happy song about the hotel in Manhattan and you've introduced all the characters. So, mission accomplished, move on to the next kind of song that this project's going to require. The same thing would hold true for writing songs for motion pictures. Opening titles or end titles, you need specifically, sometimes certain things. But left to my own devices, I tend to muddle around in my own personal feelings, which never have been that free and easy or uncomplicated. I spent the first half of my life on the losing end of almost every romantic situation that I got involved with. So a lot of my songs are about that. Right now I'm looking at life in a kind of aerial photograph view of my life and of life in general and of mankind in general. My thoughts are much deeper and much more complex than "am I gonna get this girl or am I not gonna get her, or is somebody else gonna get her?" Which, at one point seemed to be all important, I have to tell you! All important! (laughs) But right now it doesn't seem as important to me as "what the hell are we doing here? What is going on?!" You know? "Where are we headed and how are we going to avoid just total obliteration of mankind?"
TB: Yeah it is pretty scary and sad. Sometimes it really seems like we've just completely outdone ourselves as far as how bad we can wreck the planet and its people.
JW: And so those kinds of things get my attention and I write songs about that. But I'll do it in a certain way. I'll focus on a veteran who's in a wheelchair and I'll go at it through his head. "How did I get here? Why did I think this was a good idea?" You know? "What did I do this for? Was there a reason for this?" So there will be different characters. I was very heavily influenced by Joni Mitchell and I knew her. I was good friends with her and I learned a lot about conversational tone and just about modernization, about stripping away all of the ornamentation and the ivy and the vines away from the lyrics and just letting the lyrics speak like real people speak. That I learned from her, and she did it better than anybody.
TB: Yeah Joni's fantastic! What a writer!
JW: The other person that I also learned a great deal from was Randy Newman, who's a friend. And in a way, he's kind of a blues guy. You know what I mean?
TB: Oh yeah, I know what you mean exactly! I totally hear that.
JW: I find myself leaning more and more in his direction as I get older. And wanting to talk about "hey you know, why do we treat each other the way we treat each other?" You know? "This is bad, this is really bad." Oh don't be an old sour puss, don't be a party pooper! You know? And yet somebody needs to be the sourpuss and somebody needs to call attention to what a really foul place this Earth is for most of the people who live here. And I think that in a funny kind of way, that kind of leads us back towards the Blues. Because the Blues came up from misery, basically. And I think if we're not careful, we're going right back. We're going right back where we started.
TB: Well that's a perfect segue to my next question Jimmy. I know you covered Marie from Randy Newman on your album SlipCover. That was kind of a new topic for you to cover. You didn't pick the most popular songs from these artists too, which I think is great! Was doing this album an idea that you've had for a while?
JW: Yeah I wanted to do, first of all, their songs that had a direct impact on me. The way some people come up to me say you know, "the first time I heard ‘Wichita Lineman’ I cried." And I say "well, I'm happy that I was able to be a part of your life." That's really the only thing I can say. I can't say "I'm glad you cried! Yeah it's a hell of a song isn't it?!" (laughs) So I say "I'm glad that my music has been a part of your life." But it was Randy's idea for me to make an instrumental album. This is the only one I've ever made. I sing on all my albums, and by not singing, it enabled me to charge a lot more money for the album.... that was a joke! (laughs) So I loved making this album! But I love the idea of a second American songbook. I haven't got my title down on it yet, but either the Great American Songbook Volume 2 or The Second American Songbook, which would be devoted to works of outstanding beauty that were written between the 50's and the 80's. That would be the second great American Songbook. And so I started out with songs that penetrated my armor and made the tears flow. Songs like “Old Friends”, Stevie Wonder's “All In Love Is Fair”, “A Case Of You” by Joni Mitchell, which is just a guaranteed killer! And then Randy's song “Marie”, which is kind of country blues. It aims to make you cry! (laughs) I just enjoyed making the album so much, and then I decided to go whole hog and do it on vinyl. Have you seen it?
TB: Yes I have! It's amazing, and it looks beautiful!
JW: I think it's a beautiful album. I really tried to get the right color for the vinyl. So I took a self portrait that I did for Mojo magazine. I used it for the cover.
TB: Yeah the cover is great!
JW: So there it is you know? It's 500 copies and I intend to, if the good Lord's willing, make probably 5 or 6 more of those albums, and then hopefully pass the torch on to somebody else to start creating this Second American Songbook. That's the idea. Writers like Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, and you don't think of Jagger and Richards as being songwriters per se, but they've written amazing songs! Amazing songs! Sometimes it's kind of hard to hear, through the static, you know? But the songs are fantastic!
TB: Oh absolutely! Well thank you so much for talking to me today Jimmy!
JW: This has been great talking with you man! Please come out to my show in Chicago. I'd like to shake your hand.
TB: You got it Jimmy! I'll be there. I'm looking forward to it! Thanks again!
JW: God bless. Bye!
Thanks for a great interview Jimmy, thank you for all the great music you've given to the world and thank you for a very memorable night of music in Chicago.
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