A large percentage of the songs in Volume One were hits. That's much less the case here, since most of this deals with a far less portion of his career, basically from about 1970 onwards until his death (due to cancer) at the age of 78 in 2007.
The first song here, "Some Velvet Morning," was a hit, and is one of his best known songs. What a fascinating song it is. In 2003, the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph placed the single at the Number 1 spot on their 50 Best Duets Ever list. Here's a portion from the article about that list: "These two weirdly complementary sides of Hazlewood's persona unite on 'Some Velvet Morning,' a standout track from Nancy and Lee. On that track, Hazlewood and Sinatra sound like they don't inhabit the same universe, let alone the same song. ... 'Some Velvet Morning' sounds like two songs spliced together by a madman, or an avant-garde short film in song form."
In the late 1960s, Hazlewood and Sinatra were keeping their successful hit formula going. "Lady Bird" was another big hit song as a duet sung by them, although just to vary things up a bit I've included a version by Virgil Warner & Suzi Jane Hokom instead. (Hokom was Hazlewood's girlfriend in the late 1960s and into the early 1970s.) However, his fortunes changed drastically around 1970, when he decided to move to the Sweden. He ended up living there for ten years. He later claimed that he went there for several reasons, including so his son could avoid getting drafted to fight in the Vietnam War, tax trouble, and bailing out on a failing record company he had tried to run for a few years. One song here, "No Train to Stockholm," details some of his feelings about making that move.
Unfortunately, back in that era, the world was less connected, and going to Sweden was almost suicide for his music career. For instance, his highly successful collaboration with Nancy Sinatra mostly had to come to an end. However, they did reunite occasionally, for instance with an album called "Nancy and Lee Again" in 1972. That contained a Number Two hit in Britain, "Did You Ever." But I didn't included that song here because Hazlewood wasn't involved in writing it.
For much of the 1970s and 80s, he was semi-retired from the music business, although he did release his own albums from time to time. But as more time passed, his music was discovered by younger generations, and his music increasingly achieved a kind of cult status. That led to tribute albums, collaborations, and so on. He also revived his own performing career, including another album with Sinatra in 2004, and a well-regarded final album "Cake or Death," released in 2006, just one year before he died. The song "Baghdad Knights" is from that album.
A lot of the choices here are highly idiosyncratic, meaning someone else putting this together almost certainly would have made many different selections. I tried including at least a little bit of some of his different styles, including three songs he released in his own name, since I couldn't find good cover versions for those.
This album is 48 minutes long.
01 Some Velvet Morning (Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood)
02 You Turned My Head Around (Ann-Margret)
03 Sweet Ride (Dusty Springfield)
04 Lady Bird (Virgil Warner & Suzi Jane Hokom)
05 No Train to Stockholm (Lee Hazlewood)
06 For a Day like Today (Suzi Jane Hokom)
07 She Comes Running (Waylon Jennings)
08 Paris Summer (Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood)
09 Las Vegas (Lee Hazlewood)
10 Easy and Me (Kathryn Williams)
11 The Cheat (Jarvis Cocker & Richard Hawley)
12 It's Sunday Morning (Kid Loco with Tim Keegan)
13 Baghdad Knights (Lee Hazlewood)
14 The Night Before (Kristoffer & the Harbour Heads)
15 Your Sweet Love (Sungaze)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/15hZDJ7S
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/1jUKwWZhrurYWeZ/file
I don't know what year the cover photo is from. But I think it's from a little later than the cover photo for Volume 1, due to a little more grey in his hair.
No comments:
Post a Comment