[2015-11-20] Lee Hazlewood expanded remasters of his 3 MGM albums (Light In The Attic)

Linda · **Posted:** Fri Oct 30, 2015 5:06 pm

The Very Special World Of Lee Hazlewood

Description
Lee Hazlewood was a late bloomer. Following a meandering career as a disc jockey, producer, songwriter, label executive and solo artist, Hazlewood hit the jackpot at the ripe age of 37 with “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’,” the song Nancy Sinatra took to the top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. Its success convinced MGM Records that Hazlewood was a bankable star, and they signed him as an artist in his own right the same year. But as a self-described “non-singer” whose cult 1963 debut, Trouble Is A Lonesome Town, was little more than a happy accident, they’d perhaps gotten the wrong end of the stick where Lee was concerned.

In three years on the label, Hazlewood delivered three albums and sundry odds and ends, beginning with 1966 album The Very Special World Of Lee Hazlewood. The LP found Hazlewood gunning–in as much as he ever did–for commercial success, blending country, pop, novelty, mariachi, and lounge music into something unusually of-the-moment.

Lushly orchestrated and–like the album that preceded it–half-sung, half-spoken in a way that Hazlewood made all his own, the album collected solo versions of songs made famous by Sinatra and others (“Sand,” “Boots,” “So Long Babe,” “Summer Wine”–included as a bonus duet with Suzi Jane Hokom) alongside some of his career-best solo compositions, among them the Morricone-like opener, “For One Moment.” It’s a record of extremes: “When A Fool Loves A Fool” is as light and throwaway as anything he ever laid down, while the wistful “My Autumn’s Done Come” (sample lyric: “Let those I-don’t-care days come in, I’m tired of holding my stomach in”) is as raw and honest.

Despite MGM’s best efforts, Hazlewood proved difficult to market without a Sinatra to temper his baritone drawl, and you’d suspect Hazlewood wasn’t taking it quite as seriously as they might have hoped anyway. By 1967, Hazlewood had founded the LHI imprint and was busy building his own empire–one we’ve been lovingly archiving for the past few years. We now present this missing link in the story, plus follow-ups Lee Hazlewoodism: Its Cause and Cure (1967) and Something Special (1968). Welcome, then, to Hazlewood’s magnificent MGM years.

Tracklist
1. For One Moment
2. When A Fool Loves A Fool
3. Not The Lovin' Kind
4. Your Sweet Love
5. Sand
6. My Autumn's Done Come
7. These Boots Are Made For Walkin'
8. I Move Around
9. So Long, Babe
10. Bugles In The Afternoon
11. My Baby Cried All Night Long
Bonus Track:
12. Hokom Summer Wine

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0174R0AAQ/?tag=imwan-20

Lee Hazlewoodism: Its Cause And Cure

Description
The mid-to-late ’60s were strange days for Lee Hazlewood. Having struck gold as songwriter and vocal foil for Nancy Sinatra, he signed up to MGM as an artist in his own right, and between 1966 and 1968, produced three ambitious solo albums that were eclectic, idiosyncratic, and most of all, unpredictable.

It was a happy time for Lee; his music was hot on the charts, he was fully immersed in his collaboration with his muse, Suzi Jane Hokom.

The second of his MGM trilogy–1967’s peculiarly named Lee Hazlewoodism: Its Cause And Cure–took on countrified French ye-ye (“The Girls In Paris”), a tale of a young bullfighter built on Spanish guitar and choral cowboys (“Jose”), a string-drenched song about the passing of time (“The Old Man And His Guitar”), and a western epic about a Native American tribe (“The Nights”). And that was just the first four tracks. Elsewhere, the honky tonk madness of “Suzi Jane Is Back In Town,” the Byrds-like jangle of “In Our Time” and–in the bonus tracks–an instrumental named “Batman” confirm this to be one of Hazlewood’s most far-ranging, far-out LPs ever.

It’s the result of two main factors: ambition–to top Phil Spector, primarily–and cash, which paid for orchestras, plush studios, and the inestimable talents of arranger Billy Strange. “I think the big sound of those records came out of the Spector thing,” says Hokom, in the new liner notes. “If you can have a big sound and you have money to burn… it was a flamboyancy.”

Released before the Nancy & Lee LP–a bona fide hit for Reprise Records– Hazlewoodism was a tougher nut to crack, a record that confused by combining po-faced delivery with unabashed comical touches. By 1967, Hazlewood had founded the LHI imprint, and was busy building his own empire–one we’ve been lovingly archiving for the past few years. We now present this missing link in the story, plus predecessor, The Very Special World Of Lee Hazlewood and follow-up, Something Special. Welcome to Hazlewood’s magnificent–and mad–MGM years.

Tracklist
1. The Girls In Paris
2. José
3. The Old Man And His Guitar
4. The Nights
5. I Am A Part
6. Home (I'm Home)
7. After Six
8. Suzi Jane Is Back In Town
9. In Our Time
10. Dark In My Heart
Bonus Tracks:
11. Frenesi
12. Muchacho
13. Batman

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0174R0AN8/?tag=imwan-20

Something Special

Description
The three years spent on MGM Records between 1966 and 1968 were golden ones for Lee Hazlewood. He spent them working with his muse, Suzi Jane Hokom, writing a still-unreleased book, The Quiet Revenge of Elmo Furback, competing with Phil Spector from their respective studios, and coming up with the formula for the "boy/girl” songs for which he’d become famous. In fact, the unflattering portrait on the cover of Something Special did little to hint at how hip this late-flowering talent (he was in his late 30s when “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’” made him a star songwriter) had become.

The common strand on the MGM trilogy is one of the unexpected happening. They were an ill fit for a major label–experimental, difficult to pigeonhole, and unpredictable. Those descriptors apply nowhere more aptly than Something Special. Where 1966’s The Very Special World Of Lee Hazlewood and 1967’s Lee Hazlewoodism: Its Cause And Cure had employed an arranger, Billy Strange, and a full orchestra, Something Special stripped things back and brought in a flavor of jazz and blues, complete with gravelly-voiced scatting courtesy of collaborator Don Randi. This sat alongside tracks like “Little War” and “Hands,” the kind of late night, acoustic balladeering Hazlewood would later seize for his career-highlight LP, Requiem For An Almost Lady. The sound was that of a stripped-down nightclub jazz/blues/folk combo, fully rejecting the psychedelic music going on all over the world.

The album made clear that forging a career as a serious star was not at the top of Hazlewood’s agenda, and at the third opportunity, he’d let the listener in on the joke. Tellingly, Hokom recalls Hazlewood saying the MGM albums were his “expensive demos. I’m sure that MGM thought that they would be successful.” Little chance of that with Something Special –it was originally released only in Germany. The same year, Hazlewood founded the LHI imprint, and began building his own empire, one we’ve been lovingly archiving for the past few years. We now present this missing link in the story, three albums that generated some of Hazlewood’s best–and most varied–work.

Tracklist
1. Shades
2. This Town
3. Child
4. Stone Cold Blues
5. Little War
6. Them Girls
7. Fort Worth
8. Hands
9. Mannford, Oklahoma
10. Summer Night
Bonus Tracks:
11. Moochie Ladeux
12. The Lone Ranger Ain't My Friend Anymore

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0174R0A38/?tag=imwan-20

Linda · **Posted:** Tue Nov 10, 2015 8:26 pm

Bump: These have been brought forward to November 20th.

[2015-11-20] Lee Hazlewood expanded remasters of his 3 MGM albums (Light In The Attic)

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