成人快手

by Bob Stanley of

The late Lee Hazlewood - he of the deep dark voice, sly humour and drooping moustache - would have been 86 today.

Born in Oklahoma in 1929, the son of an itinerant oilman, his name will be instantly recognisable to most SOTS fans but, surprisingly, it barely registered on the British charts. In 1971 he reached no.2 with Did You Ever, a suggestive duet with that was only kept off the top by the Tams' , but his sixties chart record added up to nothing more another pair of Nancy duets, Ladybird and Jackson (the latter tucked on the other side of You Only Live Twice), in 1967.

So why does he seem so familiar? Anyone who ever owned one of Duane Eddy's twenty-plus hits of the fifties and sixties would have seen name on the producer credit, and often on the writing credit too - Eddy had the guitar growl, but it was Lee Hazelwood who recorded it in a converted grain silo to get that fierce, rumbling bass sound that made hits like 1960's (aka Johnnie Walker's signature tune) so distinctive.

After the hits began to dry up in 1963, Hazlewood began making albums under his own name, first with lugubrious tales of small town America on and the NSVIPs (1964). Though sales were low, he was finding his own voice - deep, and with a very special, dark sense of humour.

His next break came when he was asked to produce proto-boy band Dino Desi and Billy, Dino being Dean Martin's young son: I'm A Fool gave them a US Top 20 hit in 1965, Dean Martin Sr then had a US Top 30 hit with Hazlewood's sleepy Houston, and in turn Martin's best mate Frank Sinatra was in touch. Sinatra wanted to see if lightning might strike twice, and asked Lee to write a hit for his daughter Nancy, who had been recording rather prim singles since 1961 without success. He came up with the folk rocker , which grazed the US Top 40 in late 1965, then struck gold with , which wasn't prim in the slightest. "Sing it like a 14-year old who goes with truck drivers" was Hazlewood's advice to Nancy; it's highly likely neither mentioned this to Frank. So Nancy donned the boots, Lee grew a moustache, and together they were a regular feature on the US charts for the next three years.

Their chemistry was captured in the terrific 1968 TV special Movin' With Nancy, which included their greatest duet, . Lee moved to Sweden shortly after it was made (possibly to help his son avoid the draft for Vietnam) and cut a bunch of varied and enjoyable albums there in the seventies. My favourite is The Cowboy In Sweden - which also came with its own TV special. But that was in the seventies, and another story for another day.