Anecdotes

Hazlewood is perhaps best known for having written and produced the 1966 Nancy Sinatra U.S./UK No. 1 hit, "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" and "Summer Wine".

Of his cult status, Hazlewood remarked, "Thank God for kids that love obscure things! I never thought anyone would pay attention to those records, and it's a good feeling. It makes me feel like I really did get to do what I wanted to do.".

Survived by his wife, Jeane, and his children: Samantha, Debbie, and Mark.

In the 1970s Hazlewood moved to Stockholm, Sweden, where he wrote and produced the one-hour television show Cowboy in Sweden together with friend and Director Torbjörn Axelman, which also later emerged as an album.

Following discharge from the military, Hazlewood worked as a disc jockey in Phoenix while honing his song writing skills.

In 2006, Hazlewood sang on Bela B.'s first solo album, Bingo, on the song "Lee Hazlewood und das erste Lied des Tages" ("Lee Hazlewood and the first song of the day"). He said that he loved producing and writing albums.

His first hit single as a producer and songwriter was "The Fool", recorded by rockabilly artist Sanford Clark in 1956.

Hazlewood spent his teenage years in Port Neches, Texas, where he was exposed to a rich Gulf Coast music tradition.

In 1967, Hazlewood formed LHI Records standing for Lee Hazlewood Industries.Though it did not receive much attention at the time, Hazlewood also worked with Gram Parsons and the International Submarine Band in the mid-1960s. Parsons' departure from the band and decision to become part of The Byrds created legal problems with Hazlewood.[.

In 2005, Hazlewood was diagnosed with terminal renal cancer, and he undertook an extensive round of interviews and promotional activities in support of his last album, Cake or Death.

He produced several singles on Dean Martin's daughter, Deana Martin, including her country hit, "Girl of the Month Club," while Deana was still a teenager. Other tunes on that project were "When He Remembers Me," "Baby I See You" and "The Bottom of My Mind," all recorded during the 1960s.

Early in 1967 Lee Hazlewood produced the number 1 hit song for Frank & Nancy Sinatra "Somethin' Stupid". Jimmy Bowen was listed as co-producer but wasn't there at the time. Lee just gave him credit as per a previous agreement with Jimmy.

Hazlewood wrote "This Town", a song that was recorded by Frank Sinatra that appeared on his 1968 album Greatest Hits and is the basis for Paul Shaffer's "Small Town News" segment theme on the Late Show with David Letterman.

Lee Hazlewood wrote "How Does That Grab Ya, Darlin'", "Friday's Child", "So Long, Babe, "Sugar Town" and many others for NancySinatra.

His last recording was for the vocals of Icelandic quartet Amiina's single "Hilli (At the Top of the World)".

Hazlewood was born in Mannford, Oklahoma, and spent most of his youth living between Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, and Louisiana. He grew up listening to pop and bluegrass music.

His own output also achieved a cult status in the underground rock scene, with songs covered by artists such as Rowland S. Howard, Kim Salmon and the Surrealists, Miles Kane, Vanilla Fudge, Spell, Lydia Lunch, Primal Scream, Entombed, Einstürzende Neubauten, Nick Cave, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Hooverphonic, Anita Lane, Megadeth, The Ukiah Drag, Beck, Baustelle, the Tubes, Thin White Rope, Yonatan Gat, Zeena Schreck/Radio Werewolf and Slowdive.

Hazlewood was semi-retired from the music business from the late 1970s and all through the 1980s.

Among his most well-known vocal performances is "Some Velvet Morning", a 1967 duet with Nancy Sinatra. Hazlewood performed that song along with "Jackson" on her 1967 television special Movin' With Nancy.

Musician and producer Charles Normal and a group of musician friends, including Black Francis of the Pixies, Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse, Larry Norman, Pete Yorn and members of Art Brut and the Dandy Warhols, released their own version of Trouble Is a Lonesome Town in July 2013, named after the first solo album of Lee in 1963.

He retired at 35 only to come out of retirement just as soon and relocate to Sweden for a spell that yielded Cowboy in Sweden.

The Swedish Viking label issued two very rare but strong Hazlewood solo albums. Requiem For An Almost Lady, released in 1971, is an aching meditation on love lost (with some harrowing narration), while "13", from the following year, is a horn-laden departure from the Hazlewood formula that succeeds on the strength of its exuberantly dazed mania.

After hearing Hazlewood's 70s albums, one gets the feeling that Lee is perhaps the best interpreter of his own ideas, and without a doubt the albums benefit from everything he had developed up to that point: soaring symphonic pop, punctuated by dark, poetic lyrics at once esoteric, witty and honest.

Born to Gabe Hazlewood, an oilman, and his wife Eva Lee, he has one sister, Sara (born in 1935).

Has two children with his first wife Naomi, Debbie (born in 1954) and Mark (born in 1955).

Since 1968, he has lived in California, London, Paris, Stockholm, Hamburg, Helsinki, Ireland, Spain, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Texas and Florida, but finally settled down in Florida with his wife Jeanne.

Sang the song "Lee Hazlewood und das erste Lied des Tages" (Lee Hazlewood and the first song of the day) for 'Bela B''s first solo album (2006).

Many of his songs were covered by rock artists such as Einstürzende Neubauten, Nick Cave or Boyd Rice.

Studied at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas for a medical degree.

Served with the United States Army in the Korean War, where he was a disc jockey for AFRS radio in Korea and Japan.

Said the album "Cake or Death", which was released in December 2006, would be his last.

He wrote "Houston", a 1965 US hit recorded by Dean Martin.

For Frank Sinatra's 1967 detective movie, Tony Rome, Hazlewood also wrote the theme song which was performed by Nancy Sinatra.

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.

Failure to repeat the success of the Fool, sung by Sanford Clark, found Hazlewood returning to Los Angeles, where he hooked up with entrepreneur Lester Sill.

After he was demobilized in 1953, he and his wife Naomi shifted to Los Angeles, where he studied broadcasting and landed a DJ job in the small town of Coolidge, Arizona.

In 1955 he moved to KRUX radio in Phoenix, where he championed Elvis Presley.

Dismayed by the Beatles' success and the "British invasion" of the US charts, Hazlewood announced his retirement in 1964. Yet the following year Reprise Records managed to convince him to reconsider, with the prospect of producing Dino, Desi & Billy - three Hollywood 13-year olds.

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.

Having settled in Sweden in 1970, Hazlewood released, on average, two albums a year until retiring from the music industry in 1978.

In 1967 Hazlewood signed The International Submarine Band to his LHI label. While their sole album Safe At Home was not a hit, their leader, Gram Parsons, would soon be championed as the pioneer of "country-rock".

Having married his high-school sweetheart, Naomi Shackleford, he served in Japan as armed services radio DJ and saw combat during the Korean war.

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?.

Certain he could do as well as the music he was playing, Hazlewood began writing songs and set up his own label, Viv.

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.

Alongside his pop productions, Hazlewood released willfully eccentric solo albums; all were commercial failures, and his 1973 album Poet, Fool Or Bum received a one-word review in the NME - "bum".

Hazlewood wrote These Boots Are Made for Walking and instructed Sinatra to sing it "like a 16-year old girl who fucks truck drivers". 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.

His most famous song, These Boots Are Made for Walking, was a 1966 British and US No 1 for Nancy Sinatra. With its offbeat hook and sadomasochistic overtones, the work remains a fine example of the aesthetic that ran through a prolific, if unorthodox, career: his fan website hailed him as "the real creative genius of the popular music scene".

His father was a wildcat oil driller and dance promoter.

Hazlewood scored and acted in several films and also licensed his songs for film and TV soundtracks.