Summerwine

Obituary
Lee Hazlewood



Garth Cartwright
Monday August 6, 2007
The Guardian

In 1956 Lee Hazlewood's song The Fool, recorded by Phoenix country singer Sanford Clark, gave Hazlewood, who has died of renal cancer aged 78, his first top 10 hit. The hits were to keep on coming; in 2003 the British band Primal Scream (teamed with Kate Moss) brought out their version of Hazlewood's Some Velvet Morning (1968), and half a century after his first success Hazlewood released a self-proclaimed "final album", Cake Or Death. His most famous song, These Boots Are Made for Walking, was a 1966 British and US No 1 for Nancy Sinatra. With its offbeat hook and sadomasochistic overtones, the work remains a fine example of the aesthetic that ran through a prolific, if unorthodox, career: his fan website hailed him as "the real creative genius of the popular music scene".



Hazlewood was born in Mannford, Oklahoma; his father was a wildcat oil driller and dance promoter. In 1942 the family moved to Port Neches, Texas. After Huntsville high school, Hazlewood enrolled at Southern Methodist University in Dallas to study medicine, but was soon conscripted. Having married his high-school sweetheart, Naomi Shackleford, he served in Japan as armed services radio DJ and saw combat during the Korean war.
After he was demobilised in 1953, he and Naomi shifted to Los Angeles, where he studied broadcasting and landed a DJ job in the small town of Coolidge, Arizona. In 1955 he moved to KRUX radio in Phoenix, where he championed Elvis Presley. Certain he could do as well as the music he was playing, Hazlewood began writing songs and set up his own label, Viv. Then came The Fool. It was Hazlewood's innovative recording techniques that turned the single (when licensed by Dot Records) into a hit.

Failure to repeat that success found Hazlewood returning to Los Angeles, where he hooked up with entrepreneur Lester Sill. Hazlewood produced guitar tracks for teenager Duane Eddy, imaginatively employing reverb to create a potent sound, and he licensed these to Jamie Records. Eddy's second single, Rebel Rouser (1958), was a US and British hit, and the guitarist went on to enjoy a further 14 US and 25 British hits.

The young Phil Spector was impressed by Hazlewood's sound, and spent time with him in his Phoenix studio studying how he used reverb and other effects to create hits. Spector's early productions appeared on the Trey label owned by Hazlewood and Sill.

Dismayed by the Beatles' success and the "British invasion" of the US charts, Hazlewood announced his retirement in 1964. Yet the following year Reprise Records managed to convince him to reconsider, with the prospect of producing Dino, Desi & Billy - three Hollywood 13-year olds. Having produced two hits for the trio and given Dean Martin (Dino's father) a hit with his composition Houston, Hazlewood was then asked to produce Frank Sinatra's daughter Nancy. She had been recording for four years with no success; Hazlewood told her to sing in a lower register and they immediately scored a minor US hit with So Long, Babe.

Later that year Hazlewood wrote These Boots Are Made for Walking and instructed Sinatra to sing it "like a 16-year old girl who fucks truck drivers". The result established Nancy as one of pop's hottest mid-60s singers, with Hazlewood producing all her recordings and writing many of the hits. In 1967 Hazlewood produced Somethin' Stupid, a Nancy-Frank duet which topped the US and British charts. Hazlewood often shared duets with Nancy - Some Velvet Morning was one of the tracks on their 1968 album Nancy & Lee - and in 1971 they scored a British number two with Did You Ever? Hazlewood scored and acted in several films and also licensed his songs for film and TV soundtracks.

In 1967 Hazlewood signed The International Submarine Band to his LHI label. While their sole album Safe As Milk was not a hit, their leader, Gram Parsons, would soon be championed as the pioneer of "country-rock". More recently, that title has been bestowed on Hazlewood, who released his first solo album, Trouble Is a Lonesome Town, in 1963, thus introducing a gothic mix of pop and country that has since proven very influential. Alongside his pop productions, Hazlewood released wilfully eccentric solo albums; all were commercial failures, and his 1973 album Poet, Fool Or Bum received a one-word review in the NME - "bum".



Having settled in Sweden in 1970, Hazlewood released, on average, two albums a year until retiring from the music industry in 1978. Resurfacing in 1993 with the duet album Gypsies and Indians (with Anna Hanski), he then relocated to the US, toured with Nancy Sinatra and was surprised to find himself a cult figure: his albums were reissued by Sonic Youth and Tindersticks, and he was championed by Jarvis Cocker. In 1999 he headlined at London's Royal Festival Hall, returning in 2002, when he was backed by a band of leading British experimental rock musicians. In 1999 he released Farmisht, Flatulence, Origami, ARF!!! and Me..., his first album of new material in 20 years.

Of his cult status, Hazlewood remarked, "Thank God for kids that love obscure things! I never thought anyone would pay attention to those records, and it's a good feeling. It makes me feel like I really did get to do what I wanted to do."



Diagnosed with cancer, Hazlewood gave away his gold and platinum discs to friends outside the music industry and worked on Cake Or Death, released to acclaim in December 2006. He is survived by his third wife, Jeanne Kelly, and three children.

· Barton Lee Hazlewood, singer, songwriter and producer, born July 9 1929; died August 4 2007