Ashley Campbell’s Grand Ole Opry salute to dad Glen Campbell

Glen Campbell’s musician-daughter Ashley Campbell delivered a deeply moving tribute to her father in the space of just two songs over the weekend from the stage of the venerable Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.

Ashley Campbell, 29, was among nearly a dozen acts that appeared on the radio broadcast and live concert that still goes out weekly on Nashville-based radio station WSM (650 AM), to which listeners have been tuning in every Saturday night to hear the show for nearly 90 years now.

Campbell opened her set on Saturday with “Remembering,” a song included in “Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me,” director James Keach’s documentary about her father’s public battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

More than a few eyes in the house moistened when she sang:

Now I have to ask you to sing for me

And I have to show you the words to sing

You’re standing right in front of me and slipping away

Dad, I’d ask you to smile for me, it’s just the way you put me at ease

She followed it with another song connected to the theme of memory, Glen Campbell’s 1967 pop hit version of John Hartford’s “Gentle On My Mind.”

Backstage after her performance, her mother, Campbell’s wife Kim Campbell, told The Times, “Glen is happy, and in good spirits, even though he can’t communicate now.” She recently announced he had moved into the seventh and final stage of Alzheimer’s, for which he is being treated in an Alzheimer’s care facility in Nashville.

The Opry crowd gave Ashley Campbell a warm ovation at the end of her set, both in recognition of her own performance and in salute to one of country music’s most beloved performers of the last half century.

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