And I will give to you summer wine

Lee Hazlewood is dying, and that somehow seems wrong: it's like he's been here forever. Certainly that voice of his, instantly recognizable yet utterly mysterious, must have originated somewhere in the eternal. Even people who weren't Lee Hazlewood, which is to say everyone, somehow managed to sound like Lee Hazlewood when they did his songs (cf. Sanford Clark's "The Fool," penned by Hazlewood under the nom de disque "Naomi Ford").

This much you and I know: Hazlewood teamed up with Nancy Sinatra in the middle Sixties and wrote "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'," a song so full of attitude not even Jessica Simpson could screw it up. The Nancy and Lee duets are legendary, especially the folk-psych "Some Velvet Morning", which continues to defy explanation — until you note that Hazlewood has a granddaughter named Phaedra. "And how she gave me life," indeed. Then again, Phaedra was born in 1998, thirty years after "Some Velvet Morning."

(Aside: One song that turns up on the soundtrack to Allison Anders' 1996 Brill Building exegesis Grace of My Heart is "Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder," a lovely duet by Tiffany Anders and Boyd Rice which evokes the dark shimmer of "Some Velvet Morning" as few other recordings have, or can.)

Hazlewood's Sixties solo albums range from collectible to just this side of the Holy Grail; some of them are finally finding their way onto CD. And his presumed last album is titled Cake or Death. Only Lee Hazlewood could capture the human condition in thirteen characters — including spaces.

(Via Donna, who once asked me if I had a copy of the Sinatra/Hazlewood duet "Sand." I did.)

Posted at 11:00 AM to Tongue and Groove