Lee Hazlewood

Barton Lee Hazlewood (July 9, 1929 – August 4, 2007) was an American country and pop singer, songwriter, and record producer, most widely known for his work with guitarist Duane Eddy during the late 1950s and singer Nancy Sinatra in the 1960s and 1970s. His collaborations with Sinatra as well as his solo output in the late 1960s and early 1970s have been praised as an essential contribution to a sound often described as "cowboy psychedelia" or "saccharine underground". Rolling Stone ranked Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra No. 9 on its list of the 20 Greatest Duos of All Time.

Early life Barton Lee Hazlewood was born in Mannford, Oklahoma, Hazlewood's father was an oil worker and had a sideline as a dance promoter; Hazlewood spent most of his youth living in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, and Louisiana. His mother was half Creek. Lee grew up listening to pop and bluegrass music. He spent his teenage years in Port Neches, Texas, where he was exposed to a rich Gulf Coast music tradition. He studied for a medical degree at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He worked as a disc jockey in Coolidge, Arizona and two years later, moved to KRUX radio in Phoenix. During that time, he was already writing songs and formed his own record label, Viv. His first hit single as a producer and songwriter was "The Fool", recorded by rockabilly artist Sanford Clark in 1955.

He partnered with pioneering rock guitarist Duane Eddy,

Hazlewood wrote the theme song "The Last of the Secret Agents", the theme song of the 1966 spy-spoof film of the same title. Nancy Sinatra, who had a role in the film, recorded the song for the soundtrack. For Frank Sinatra's 1967 detective film, Tony Rome, Hazlewood wrote the theme song which was performed by Nancy.

He wrote "Houston", a 1965 US hit recorded by Dean Martin. He produced several singles for Martin's daughter, Deana Martin, including her country hit, "Girl of the Month Club", while Deana was a teenager. Other tunes on that project were "When He Remembers Me", "Baby I See You" and "The Bottom of My Mind", all recorded during the 1960s.

Hazlewood wrote "This Town", a song that was recorded by Frank Sinatra that appeared on his 1968 album Greatest Hits and was the basis for Paul Shaffer's "Small Town News" segment theme on the Late Show with David Letterman.

In 1967, Hazlewood started his own record label, LHI Records (Lee Hazlewood Industries). Though it did not receive much attention at the time, the International Submarine Band, led by a then-unknown Gram Parsons, signed with LHI in 1967 and released their one and only album, Safe at Home. Shortly after the album was recorded, Parsons left the band to join The Byrds, contributing several songs to their 1968 album Sweetheart of the Rodeo. The contract Parsons had signed with Hazlewood's LHI caused a great deal of trouble for himself and The Byrds, and in the court settlement most of Parsons' material on Sweetheart of the Rodeo had the vocals removed and re-recorded by Roger McGuinn. This situation led to Parsons' departure from the Byrds not long after the album's release.

As LHI producer and Hazlewood's ex-girlfriend Suzi Jane Hokom later noted, Hazlewood was a performer and not a businessman, and his lack of business acumen figured greatly in the label's 1971 demise. He had a supporting role in the movie The Moonshine War, released in 1970 from a story by Elmore Leonard, starring Patrick McGoohan.

In the 1970s, Hazlewood moved to Stockholm, where he wrote and produced the one-hour television show Cowboy in Sweden together with friend and director Torbjörn Axelman, which also later emerged as an album.

During ten years in Sweden, he made records and films with Axelman. According to a retrospective of his career, the move to Europe was motivated by his "tax problems", concern that his son might be drafted for the Vietnam War and the fact that his record label "LHI was dying anyway", so Sweden looked like the perfect escape route. Decades later, his friend Suzi Jane Hokom made this comment about the years in Europe. "I think he knew he'd burned his bridges in LA and here was a brand new world where he had a built-in fanclub ... He really needed a new start".

Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, Hazlewood was semi-retired from the music business. However, his own output also achieved a cult status in the underground rock scene, with songs recorded by artists such as Miles Kane, Primal Scream, Nick Cave, the Jesus and Mary Chain, The Ukiah Drag, Beck, Baustelle, the Tubes, Thin White Rope, Yonatan Gat, Zeena Schreck/Radio Werewolf and Slowdive.

In 2006, Hazlewood sang on Bela B.'s first solo album, Bingo, on the song "Lee Hazlewood und das erste Lied des Tages" ("Lee Hazlewood and the first song of the day"). He said that he loved producing and writing albums.

In 2007, Reprise/Rhino Handmade Records posthumously released Strung Out On Something New: The Reprise Recordings, a set of his work at Reprise from 1964-1968 (excluding the Nancy Sinatra recordings). The 2 CD collection, totaling 55 tracks, covers three of his solo albums as well as production work for other artists, such as Duane Eddy, Sanford Clark, Jack Nitzsche and Dino, Desi & Billy.

Since 2012, the Light in the Attic record label reissued many Hazlewood albums, including 400 Miles From LA: 1955-1956, which became available in September 2019.

Personal life

Hazlewood was married three times. On December 5, 1949, he married his high-school sweetheart, Naomi Shackleford. The couple had two children, Debbie (b. 1954) and Mark Lee (b. 1955), before divorcing in 1969. Hazlewood used Naomi's maiden name for The Shacklefords, a short-lived vocal group he formed with Marty Cooper in early-1960s Los Angeles; Naomi herself contributed vocals to the group's recordings. In 1983, Hazlewood married Tracy Stewart, whose daughter Samantha (b. 1980) he raised as his own; In November 2006, less than a year before his death, he married Jeane Kelly, his girlfriend since 1993, in a Las Vegas drive-through ceremony.

Hazlewood has a granddaughter named Phaedra, a tribute to the lyrics of "Some Velvet Morning". Phaedra joined Hazlewood on his introspective version of the track "Some Velvet Morning" from his final album, Cake or Death.

Discography

1963 – Trouble Is a Lonesome Town 1964 – The N.S.V.I.P.'s 1965 – Friday's Child 1966 – The Very Special World of Lee Hazlewood 1967 – Lee Hazlewoodism: Its Cause and Cure 1968 – Nancy & Lee – a collaboration with Nancy Sinatra 1968 – Something Special 1968 – Love and Other Crimes 1969 – The Cowboy and the Lady – a collaboration with Ann-Margret. 1969 – Forty 1970 – Cowboy in Sweden – two songs are on Forty, and one on Love and Other Crimes 1971 – Requiem for an Almost Lady 1971 – Nancy & Lee Again/Nancy & Lee - Did You Ever? – a collaboration with Nancy Sinatra 1972 – 13 1973 – I'll Be Your Baby Tonight 1973 – Poet, Fool or Bum 1974 – The Stockholm Kid Live at Berns 1975 – A House Safe for Tigers 1976 – 20th Century Lee 1977 – Movin' On 1977 – Back on the Street Again 1993 – Gypsies & Indians – a collaboration with Anna Hanski 1999 – Farmisht, Flatulence, Origami, ARF!!! & Me... 2002 – For Every Solution There's a Problem 2004 – Nancy & Lee 3 – a collaboration with Nancy Sinatra 2006 – Cake or Death