Lee Hazlewood (July 9, 1929 – August 4, 2007), was an American country and pop singer, songwriter, and record producer, most widely known for his work with guitarist Duane Eddy during the late fifties and singer Nancy Sinatra in the sixties.
Barton Lee 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.
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.
Later that year Hazlewood wrote These Boots Are Made for Walking. 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.
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.
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 died of renal cancer in Henderson, Nevada, on August 4, 2007. (Edited mainly from Garth Cartwright @ The Guardian)