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CD
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LITA 153CD
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"Album remastered from pristine LHI master tapes. Includes previously unheard versions of 'Pray Them Bars Away' & 'Easy & Me.' Liner notes by Hunter Lea including interviews with Torbjörn Axelman, Suzi Jane Hokom, Nina Lizell, Don Randi, Hal Blaine and Shel Talmy. Rare film production photos from the Torbjörn Axelman archive. Light In The Attic records is proud to continue its Lee Hazlewood series with this expanded reissue of Cowboy in Sweden. Released as the last LHI LP, Cowboy in Sweden was a soundtrack to the 1970 cult classic film of the same name starring Lee Hazlewood. The film was a surreal psychedelic account of Lee's journey to his new homeland, while the soundtrack was a perfect compilation of Hazlewood's strongest songs recorded over a prolific globe trotting three year period. The production scope of the album was the most ambitious of his career, recorded in Paris, London, Los Angeles and Stockholm with a slew of talented session musicians, producers and arrangers. Cowboy in Sweden is quite possibly the purest distillation of the Hazlewood sound; lush melancholy country pop with a pinch of humor ('Pray Them Bars Away'), a dash of bummer ('Cold Hard Times'), some beautiful ladies to sing with ('Leather & Lace' & 'Hey Cowboy') and even a couple anti-war protest songs to be topical ('No Train to Stockholm' & 'For A Day Like Today'). The David 'Bitter Sweet Symphony' Whitaker arranged orchestral pop of 'What's More I Don't Need Her' and the stone cold Hazlewood classic 'The Night Before' cement the album as Lee's peak on LHI records and ironically the label's swan song."
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CD
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LITA 132CD
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"Album remastered from the original tapes with bonus tracks. Liner notes booklet with exclusive interviews and archive photos. 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."
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CD
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LITA 133CD
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"Album remastered from the original tapes with bonus track. Liner notes booklet with exclusive interviews and archive photos. 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."
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LP
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IF 074LP
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"Riding the crest of successive hit-making for Duane Eddy, Sanford Clark, Dean Martin and Nancy Sinatra, the ever-industrious Lee Hazlewood still found time to release his excellent third solo album in 1965. His second solo recording for the Reprise label, Friday's Child indulges his signature country-pop flare and pioneering use of vocal reverb. With electric guitar leads, harp and female backup vocals, the album finds Hazlewood embellishing his arrangements, though some of its strongest moments draw their impact only from his rich timbre. Some artists develop their voice for years; Hazlewood's third album proves it was an innate and irrevocable gift. Weepy guitar leads kick off the title track and Hazlewood takes up the story of twinkling sorrow and bad luck. He often speckles pain with humor, but 'Friday's Child' is one of his most purely somber ballads. Elsewhere, with finger snaps, sparse backup vocals and Hazlewood's emotive intonation, the intro of 'Houston' alone could carry on entirely a cappella and still endure as a classic. The composition made a hit for Dean Martin, but the Friday's Child version shows Hazlewood's inimitable skill as a vocal stylist. Mostly lacking the dada-esque humor of his first two albums, Friday's Child places Hazlewood in league with the era's greatest traditional songwriters, though one for whom pop conventions were to be bucked and cast aside."
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IF 073LP
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"Lee Hazlewood's partnership with Reprise Records in the 1960s resulted in timeless hits for Dean Martin and Nancy Sinatra. Throughout the decade, though, the label also released three of the artist's most highly regarded solo works: The N.S.V.I.P.'s, Friday's Child and Love and Other Crimes. Hazlewood's 1964 sophomore album The N.S.V.I.P.'s (Not So Very Important People) is the perfect companion to his classic debut, Trouble Is a Lonesome Town, released the year prior. Setting his signature spoken intros to a new cast of small town eccentrics (perhaps modeled on his childhood locale in Mannford, Oklahoma), this early career high-point presents Hazlewood with all of his singular assets already intact: playful lyrics veering toward the bizarre, wry delivery and wonderfully understated pop-country song craft."
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11x7" BOX
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LITA 094BOX
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RSD Black Friday 2012 release. "Part of the sheer joy of Light in the Attic's excavation of Lee Hazlewood's back catalogue has been exploring the output of his own, late '60s label, Lee Hazlewood Industries, which issued dozens of long forgotten 45s and LPs. Whether acid-folk, country-rock, pop-psych or soul, LHI artists were united by the patronage of the underdog hero of 1960s music, the mustachioed maverick Lee Hazlewood. The best of these have been now collected in You Turned My Head Around, a lavishly packaged, 3000-edition box set of eleven 45s, featuring such LHI favorites as Suzi Jane Hokom, Honey Ltd., Kitchen Cinq, Ann-Margret, and of course the undeniable Mr Lee. Though Lee Hazelwood neither sings nor appears on many of these tracks, You Turned My Head Around still tells the listener much about the cult singer-songwriter, producer, film star, and latter-day cowboy. Like Hazlewood's own output, these are pop songs colored by sadness, pain, and wisdom. Hazlewood's character is there in every long, spiral groove thanks to his stunning production."
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CD
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WATER 203CD
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"Recorded in 1967 but shelved at the time and then only released in Germany some twenty years later, this would have been the third solo album for MGM from country music's first true idiosyncratic genius. Hazlewood's unique blend of country, pop, jazz, folk and blues can be found here but with songs that are even slightly more off-the-wall than usual, perhaps explaining the reluctance on the part of MGM to release the record. The most eccentric record from country music's legendary outsider artist. Contains liner notes."
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