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Lee Hazlewood

Biography | Releases | Links

Biography

In April 1999 Smells Like Records began reissuing rare recordings by one of pop music's most original and endearing -- yet largely unsung -- iconoclasts, writer/producer/singer Lee Hazlewood. Known primarily for the timeless hits he wrote and/or produced for stars and legends including Duane Eddy, Nancy Sinatra, Waylon Jennings, Dean Martin, and more, Hazlewood also issued several sterling solo albums as an artist on his own LHI (Lee Hazlewood Industries) imprint throughout the 60s and 70s.

Difficult to find even on the original LP format, the albums had been fetching high prices among collectors for years, and by the early 90s imported CD bootlegs were rampant. SLR wanted to bring these gems to the compact disk legitimately, and affordably, for the first time, in order to raise the profile of this singular American artist.

The series commenced with the 1970 release Cowboy In Sweden, the first of a series of albums recorded in Sweden, and Farmisht, Flatulence, Origami, ARF!!!, and me, a collection of popular standards recorded in 1997, which was the first new Lee Hazlewood album released domestically in nearly two decades. Over the next six months, SLR released Trouble is a Lonesome Town, his spare and simple solo debut, Requiem for an Almost Lady, an aural anatomy of a bittersweet breakup, and 13, a barnstorming, brass-laden funk record. May 2000 saw the release of The Cowboy & The Lady, an album of duets with 60s screen legend Ann-Margret.

read more about Lee Hazlewood

Releases

The Cowboy And The Lady
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1. Am I That Easy To Forget
2. Only Mama That Will Walk That Line
3. Greyhound Bus Depot
4. Walk On Out Of My Mind
5. Hangin' On
6. Victims Of The Night
7. Break My Mind
8. You Can't Imagine
9. Sweet Thing
10. No Regrets
11. Dark End Of The Street
12. Sleep In The Grass
13. Chico

This odd gem was originally released in 1969 as the debut LP on Lee's own LHI label, following several singles by Ann-Margret and Lee, Honey Ltd. and others. The duo perform songs such as "Dark End of the Street" and "Only Mama That'll Walk the Line" with utterly unique style. In addition, Lee performs Tom Rush's "No Regrets" solo, taking a cold, hard look at the aftermath of love gone wrong in typical Hazlewood fashion. Also included are four extremely rare songs from the first two singles on LHI: Sleep in the Grass / Chico; and You Turned My Head Around / It's A Nice World To Visit (But Not to Live In), which have been out-of-print virtually since the time of their release.

13
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1. You Look Like A Lady
2. Tulsa Sunday
3. Ten or 11 Towns
4. Toocie and the River
5. She Comes Running
6. Rosacoke Street
7. I Move Around
8. And I Love You Then
9. Hej, Me I'm Riding

Arguably the strangest and most sought after album in Lee's oeuvre, this 1972 Sweden-only release marks a departure from the sound of his previous work, featuring an exuberant horn section firmly grounded in bellyful of scotch-drenched soul. Sunday-morning cartoon maestro Larry Marks' arrangements lend a certain unmistakable color to another fine batch of Hazlewood tunes. Limited Availability.

Requiem For An Almost Lady
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1. In The Beginning/I'm Glad I Never...
2. If It's Monday Morning
3. L.A. Lady
4. Won't You Tell Your Dreams
5. I'll Live Yesterdays
6. Little Miss Sunshine (Little Miss Rain)
7. Stone Lost Child
8. Come On Home To Me
9. Must Have Been Something I Loved
10. I'd Rather Be Your Enemy

Released in 1970, in Sweden and the UK only, this may well be the heaviest breakup record no one ever heard -- ten short, simple, economically orchestrated songs, featuring Lee's lovesick baritone cushioned only by bass, acoustic guitar and occasional steel. Also one of the rarest LPs in the Hazlewood canon - unheard even by many of the most devout Lee fanatics. Truly a great lost album, an important piece of the mature phase of Lee's career, in which nearly every song to spill from his pen was of the highest craft.

Trouble Is A Lonesome Town
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1. Long Black Train
2. Ugly Brown
3. Son Of A Gun
4. We All Make The Flowers Grow
5. Run Boy Run
6. Six Feet Of Chain
7. The Railroad
8. Look At That Woman
9. Peculiar Guy

Lee's first proper solo album, released in late 1963, appeared between his partnerships with Duane Eddy and Nancy Sinatra. While Lee himself considered Trouble primarily a writer's album (to showcase his songs for bigger artists), it's actually the first manifestation of what would become his own unique aesthetic, a highly personal vision that's difficult to imagine being interpreted by anyone else. Like Faulkner's mythical Yowkapatonka, Lee's Trouble brims with baroquely American people, places and stories: debonair undertakers, embalming fluid-quaffing Indians, ugly ducklings, unattainable ice-queens, and assorted jokers, cowards, heroes, all extravagantly named, whose histories and exploits unfold in these short, spare musical portraits. Out of Print.

Farmisht, Flatulence, Origami, ARF!!! and me...
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1. Gee Baby Ain't I Good To You
2. Makin' Whoopee
3. It Had To Be You
4. She's Funny That Way
5. Am I Blue
6. Try A Little Tenderness
7. Honeysuckle Rose
8. I Can't Get Started
9. Ain't Misbehavin'
10. The Very Thought Of You
11. Don't Get Around Much Anymore

A collection of pop standards sung inimitably by Lee and backed by the Al Casey Combo. Lee's voice has matured from the pure baritone drawl he deployed in the 60s and 70s to a seasoned, smokey croon, soaked in the wisdom of a lifetime spent enduring both the spoils and the vagaries of the business, making his renditions of these classics some of the most honest and idiosyncratic you'll ever hear. A Phoenix native, Casey played guitar on Lee's early sessions, and, like Lee, later migrated to Hollywood, where he contributed as a session guitarist to hits by Phil Spector, Motown, and the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and Good Vibrations.

Cowboy In Sweden
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1. Pray Them Bars Away
2. Leather and Lace (with Nina Lizell)
3. Cold Hard World
4. Forget Marie
5. The Night Before
6. Hey Cowboy (with Nina Lizell)
7. No Train To Stockholm
8. For A Day Like Today (Suzi Jane Hokom)
9. Easy & Me
10. What's More I Don't Need Her
11. Vem Kan Segla (with Nina Lizell)

This 1970 film and album project was the first of several collaborations between Hazlewood and Swedish filmmaker Torbjorn Axelman. Singers Nina Lizell and Suzi Jane Hokom bring unique approaches to Hazlewood material which would have been way too sophisticated, in its humor as much as its subject matter, for mainstream pop audiences. It's prime Hazlewood: a singular synthesis of cowboy rambles, rockabilly rhythms and symphonic pop with dark, poetic lyrics intertwining hard luck tales, pragmatic politics and love odes. Peppered with esoteric images and declaimed with wit, irony and wry honesty, they prefigure the self-conscious self-referencing of successive generations of lyricists. Out of Print

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Links

A great Hazlewood fan site