Lee Hazlewood

Country and pop iconoclast Lee Hazlewood has been one of the music world's most irascible geniuses during a long, fruitful career. An Oklahoma Dust Bowl refugee who grew up to become a dedicated Europhile; a production heavyweight who authored success stories for Duane Eddy and Nancy Sinatra but also a recording eccentric who refused to acknowledge mainstream tastes; a songwriter capable of crippling fatalism ("My Autumn's Done Come") and playful country corn ("Dolly Parton's Guitar"), and songs that use elements of both ("Dark in My Heart"); it's all part of the highly contradictory legend of Hazlewood.



Hazlewood was born Barton Lee Hazlewood in 1929 in Mannford, OK. (A 1968 recording even took his birthplace as its title.) His father, an oil man, moved the family around continually during the 1930s and '40s while looking for work -- with stops in Arkansas, Kansas, and Louisiana -- before landing on the Gulf Coast in Port Neches, TX. Hazlewood enrolled at Southern Methodist planning to study medicine but was conscripted soon after; he married his high-school sweetheart, Naomi Shackleford, then spent several years overseas, spinning records in Japan for Armed Services Radio but also on active duty in Korea.

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