Barton Lee Hazlewood was born in Mannford, Oklahoma on July 9, 1929. The son of an oil worker father, Hazlewood spent most of his youth living between Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, and Louisiana. His paternal grandmother was Native American. He grew up listening to pop and bluegrass music. Lee spent his teenage years in Port Neches, Texas, where he was exposed to a rich Gulf Coast music tradition. He studied for a medical degree at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He served with the United States Army during the Korean War.
Hazlewood was initially known as a producer and songwriter, for artists including Duane Eddy, Dean Martin, and Dino, Desi & Billy. Following discharge from the military in 1953, Hazlewood worked as a disc jockey in Coolidge, Arizona and two years later, moved to KRUX radio in Phoenix. During that time, he was already writing songs and formed his own record label, Viv. His first hit single as a producer and songwriter was "The Fool", recorded by rockabilly artist Sanford Clark in 1956. He partnered with pioneering rock guitarist Duane Eddy, producing and co-writing a string of hit instrumental records. "Rebel Rouser", released in 1958 was a hit in the US and in the UK; Eddy would eventually have another 14 US hits, including "Peter Gunn", "Boss Guitar", "Forty Miles of Bad Road", "Shazam!" and "(Dance With The) Guitar Man".
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", the latter first recorded with Suzi Jane Hokom in 1966. His collaboration with Nancy Sinatra began when Frank Sinatra asked Lee to help boost his daughter's career. When recording These Boots are Made for Walkin', Hazlewood is said to have made this suggestion to Nancy, "You can’t sing like Nancy Nice Lady any more. You have to sing for the truckers". She later described him as "part Henry Higgins and part Sigmund Freud".
Hazlewood also wrote "How Does That Grab Ya, Darlin'", "Friday's Child", "So Long, Babe, "Sugar Town" and many others for Sinatra. Among his most well-known vocal performances is "Some Velvet Morning", a 1967 duet with Nancy Sinatra. He performed that song along with "Jackson" on her 1967 television special Movin' With Nancy. Early in 1967, Lee also produced the number 1 hit song for Frank & Nancy Sinatra "Somethin' Stupid". The pair became the only father-daughter duo to top the Hot 100 with what DJs dubbed 'the incest song' because it performed as if sung by two lovers. The record earned a Grammy Award nomination for Record of the Year and remains the only father-daughter duet to hit No. 1 in the U.S. Jimmy Bowen was listed as co-producer on that record but wasn't there at the time. Hazlewood just gave him credit as per a previous agreement with Jimmy.
Hazlewood also wrote the theme song "The Last of the Secret Agents", the theme song of the 1966 spy-spoof film of the same title. Nancy Sinatra, who had a role in the film, recorded the song for the soundtrack. For Frank Sinatra's 1967 detective movie, Tony Rome, Hazlewood also wrote the theme song which was performed by Nancy. He wrote "Houston", a 1965 US hit recorded by Dean Martin. He also produced several singles for 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. Hazlewood also 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.
In 1967, Hazlewood started his own record label, LHI Records (Lee Hazlewood Industries). Though it did not receive much attention at the time, the International Submarine Band, led by a then-unknown Gram Parsons, signed with LHI in 1967 and released their one and only album, Safe at Home. Shortly after the album was recorded, Parsons left the band to join The Byrds, contributing several songs to their 1968 album Sweetheart of the Rodeo. The contract Parsons had signed with Hazlewood's LHI caused a great deal of trouble for himself and The Byrds, and in the court settlement most of Parsons' material on Sweetheart of the Rodeo had the vocals removed and re-recorded by Roger McGuinn. This situation led to Parsons' departure from the Byrds not long after the album's release. As LHI producer and Hazlewood's ex-girlfriend Suzi Jane Hokom later noted, Hazlewood was a performer and not a businessman, and his lack of business acumen figured greatly in the label's 1971 demise.
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. During ten years in Sweden he made records and films with Axelman. According to a retrospective of his career, the move to Europe was motivated by his "tax problems", concern that his son might be drafted for the Vietnam war and the fact that his record label "LHI was dying anyway", so Sweden looked like the perfect escape route. Decades later, his friend Suzi Jane Hokom made this comment about the years in Europe. "I think he knew he'd burned his bridges in LA and here was a brand new world where he had a built-in fanclub ... He really needed a new start".
Lee was semi-retired from the music business from the late 1970s and all through the 1980s. However, his own output also achieved a cult status in the underground rock scene, with songs recorded 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, KMFDM, Anita Lane, Megadeth, The Ukiah Drag, Beck, Baustelle, the Tubes, Thin White Rope, Yonatan Gat, Zeena Schreck/Radio Werewolf and Slowdive.
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.
In 2007, Reprise/Rhino Handmade Records posthumously released 'STRUNG OUT ON SOMETHING NEW: THE REPRISE RECORDINGS', a set of his work at Reprise from 1964-1968 (excluding the Nancy Sinatra recordings). The 2 CD collection, totaling 55 tracks, covers three of his solo albums as well as production work for other artists, such as Duane Eddy, Sanford Clark, Jack Nitzche and Dino, Desi & Billy.
Since 2012, the Light in the Attic record label reissued many Hazlewood albums, including 400 Miles From LA: 1955-1956, which became available in September 2019.
Hazlewood died of renal cancer in Henderson, Nevada, on August 4, 2007, survived by his wife Jeane, son Mark and daughters Debbie and Samantha.
Dark In My Heart
Lee Hazlewood Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
But I can't no I can't
Woke up Sunday morning and I thought I heard bells ring
But they don't no they won't
Oh it's dark it's dark in my heart
Got a letter from my mama but she didn't send no cash
Send no cash not a dime
Writin' trash talked for the trash
Oh it's dark it's dark in my heart
I asked a man some questions and he told me just the truth
Just the truth and I didn't believe him
I asked a girl for lovin' and she walked in the phonebooth
That ain't cool in the phonebooth
Oh it's dark it's dark in my heart
Met a girl in New York and she had a lotta class
Lotta class tourist class
Took the girl to LA but she said it wouldn't last
Wouldn't last and it didn't
Oh it's dark it's dark in my heart
Oh it's dark it's dark in my heart
The song "Dark in My Heart" is a melancholic reflection on life and love, as the singer wakes up on a Sunday morning feeling like he can't sing and everything feels wrong. He hears bells ringing, but they are not real, and he is engulfed in darkness. The first verse sets the tone and describes the general feeling of disillusionment and despair.
In the second verse, the singer receives letters from his mother and sister, but they are not helping him out financially, and his sister is still writing trash. This highlights the unsatisfactory state of his relationships with his family and emphasizes the sense of loneliness and despair he feels.
The next two verses show the hopelessness the singer feels in his search for truth and love. The advice he receives is unwelcome, and the prospect of love is unattainable, with the woman he meets in New York ultimately rejecting him in Los Angeles.
Overall, the lyrics of the song paint a vivid picture of a man struggling with his place in the world, his relationships, and his inner thoughts and emotions. The repeated refrain of "Oh it's dark it's dark in my heart" hammers home the bleakness of the situation and the depth of the singer's pain.
Line by Line Meaning
Woke up Sunday morning and I thought that I could sing
I woke up with a feeling that I could achieve anything
But I can't no I can't
But that feeling disappeared and I realized my limitation
Woke up Sunday morning and I thought I heard bells ring
I woke up with hope and believed good things were about to happen
But they don't no they won't
But disappointment hit me as nothing went as I hoped
Got a letter from my mama but she didn't send no cash
My mom wrote me, but she didn't send me any money
Send no cash not a dime
She didn't send me anything at all
Got a letter from my sister and she's still writin' trash
My sister wrote me, but she continues to write unsatisfactory things
Writin' trash talked for the trash
She's only writing things that contribute to garbage
I asked a man some questions and he told me just the truth
I asked a man some questions, and he provided me with honest answers
Just the truth and I didn't believe him
It was the truth, but I couldn't believe what he said
I asked a girl for lovin' and she walked in the phonebooth
I asked a girl for love, but she wasn't interested and walked away
That ain't cool in the phonebooth
It was an unpleasant situation when she walked away while I was still speaking to her
Met a girl in New York and she had a lotta class
I met a girl in New York who was exceptional in every way
Lotta class tourist class
She had a lot of class but was just a tourist
Took the girl to LA but she said it wouldn't last
I took her to LA, but she didn't think our relationship would last
Wouldn't last and it didn't
She was right, and our relationship didn't last
Oh it's dark it's dark in my heart
All of these negative experiences created a sense of despair and hopelessness within me
Oh it's dark it's dark in my heart
The darkness in my heart is overwhelming and all-consuming
Contributed by Muhammad B. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
iamjoshl
[Verse 1:]
Woke up Sunday morning and I thought that I could sing
But I can't no I can't
Woke up Sunday morning and I thought I heard bells ring
But they don't, and they won't
[Chorus:]
Oh it's dark
Yeah it's dark
In my heart
[Verse 2:]
Got a letter from my mama but she didn't send no cash
Send no cash not a dime
Got a letter from my sister and she's still writin' trash
Writin' trash, top 40 trash
[Chorus]
[Verse 3:]
I asked a man some questions and he told me just the truth
Just the truth, and I didn't believe him
I asked a girl for lovin' and she walked in the phonebooth
That ain't cool, in the phonebooth
[Chorus]
[Verse 4:]
Met a girl in New York and she had a lotta class
Lotta class, tourist class
Took the girl to LA but she said it wouldn't last
Wouldn't last, and it didn't
[Chorus x2]
Earnest66
One of the coolest guys who ever lived.
iamjoshl
[Verse 1:]
Woke up Sunday morning and I thought that I could sing
But I can't no I can't
Woke up Sunday morning and I thought I heard bells ring
But they don't, and they won't
[Chorus:]
Oh it's dark
Yeah it's dark
In my heart
[Verse 2:]
Got a letter from my mama but she didn't send no cash
Send no cash not a dime
Got a letter from my sister and she's still writin' trash
Writin' trash, top 40 trash
[Chorus]
[Verse 3:]
I asked a man some questions and he told me just the truth
Just the truth, and I didn't believe him
I asked a girl for lovin' and she walked in the phonebooth
That ain't cool, in the phonebooth
[Chorus]
[Verse 4:]
Met a girl in New York and she had a lotta class
Lotta class, tourist class
Took the girl to LA but she said it wouldn't last
Wouldn't last, and it didn't
[Chorus x2]
Fahlquald
I think he says "that ain't couth in the phone booth" but everything else seems spot on
Steve Sizemore
Today is Lee's birthday. He's the real King of Pop Music of the 50's and 60's, but he never demanded attention. The music speaks volumes ...!
TheHankerchief26
Came here by way of Holly Golightly and the Brokeoffs, who recorded a cover of this. Prior to that, I'd never heard of Lee Hazlewood, but I'm immensely glad I did. Excellent stuff!
HitchyBitchyBabe
This song describes my entire life
F. D.
Same here
dino de luca
The King of Cool!
Marcus P
He was cool when country wasn't cool.
lorena bobbitt
He’s the besttttt