Cowboy in Sweden [ORIGINAL RECORDING REISSUED]

Lee Hazlewood

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 27, 1999)
• Original Release Date: 1970
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording reissued
• Label: Smells Like Records
• ASIN: B00000IJGY
• Also Available in: Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #154,852 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

From the Label
Free to ramble in the heady post-"Boots" days, a newly minted Lee Hazlewood traveled abroad, ultimately landing in Sweden, a locale which would inspire some of his strongest work. His key artistic associate in Sweden was the film director Torbjrn Axelman, and together the two masterminded the film and album project Cowboy In Sweden. The album went gold in Sweden, and was the first of several acclaimed Hazlewood/Axelman collaborations.

Two talented female vocalists are a big part of Cowboy's sound. Nina Lizell and Suzi Jane Hokom bring heavenly voices and unique approaches to Hazlewood material which would have been way too sophisticated, in its humour as much as its subject matter, for mainstream pop audiences. Hokom was a successful, gender-gap smashing producer in her own right, her credits including the one and only album by the International Submarine Band, fronted by a young Gram Parsons, on Lee's LHI label. Lizell has maintained a successful singing career, performing throughout Scandinavia and Europe to this day.

The music on this album is prime Hazlewood: a singular synthesis of cowboy rambles, rockabilly rhythms and symphonic pop. His dark, poetic lyrics intertwine hard luck tales, pragmatic politics and love odes. Peppered with esoteric images and declaimed with wit, irony and wry honesty, they prefigure the self-conscious/self-referencing mania of successive generations of lyricists.

Tracks like the almost whispered anti-war meditation "No Train To Stockholm", the Bacharachian coyness of "Hey Cowboy" and the honky-tonk-meets-strings of "Pray Them Bars Away" display his utterly unique muse in full splendor. An ideal entre into the Hazlewood oeuvre.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another slab of magnificence from Lee Hazlewood., April 23, 2000

By	Monkey Knuckle Asteroid (the quitters never win department....) - See all my reviews

Lee Hazlewood's genius knows no measureable bounds. He is a producer, writer, arranger, singer and performer. He can and does do it all. Thankfully, his long-obscure albums are being re-released by SLR (Thanks!) and you are afforded this wonderful opportunity to listen to one of the finest musical apparitions of our times...\

"Cowboy in Sweden" follows Lee's trend of employing female vocalists to counteract his coal mine of a voice and create something positively eerie. It works to maximum effect here, as his voice rumbles alongside the happy-go-lucky lilt of Nina Lizzel and Suzi Jane Hokum's accented voices.

Hazlewood is best compared to Tom Waits in his imagery and content. He talks of prisons and trains and lost loves and leaving town. And through it all, you hear the faint tone of subversion, of against all odds, because, frankly, someone like Lee Hazlewood shouldn't have been allowed to make albums...they didn't fit anywhere and would never appeal to more than a few thousand people around the world.

It is time for you to join the army of Lee Hazlewood.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Arcane Treasure, March 16, 2004

By A Customer

A classic album, slightly cheapened by the shoddy packaging and sound quality. The sound is very muddy and wobbly, as if mastered from very worn tapes. The booklet features several black and white snaps, some LARGE PRINT bios and recording details, and a weird preface by Lee. Essential.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Country-Pop Smorgasbord, April 29, 2003

By	Kurt Harding "bon vivant" (Boerne TX) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

As I develop a belated appreciation for the talents of Lee Hazlewood, I have been picking up CDs of his earlier work one at a time. Cowboy In Sweden is one such recent acquisition. It offers the listener a smorgasbord of country-pop songs written for a Swedish TV show of the same name as this CD. Several of them should have attained the status of classics.
The whole CD is listenable and enjoyable despite the cutesy lyrics of Hey Cowboy and the sort of out of place anti-war sentiments (in a cowboy show?) of No Train To Stockholm. And it might be seen as merely pleasant but ordinary except for the presence of three great songs, two of which were penned by Hazlewood.
One of the best is a very humorous and very country prison song, Pray Them Bars Away. Hazlewood's wry sense of humor really comes through again and again. The closing song, Vem Kan Segla, is a haunting love song featuring Nina Lizell's Swedish vocals swirling around Hazlewood's baritone spoken translation in English. The best song is The Night Before, a stunning and mournful tale of sad emptiness after a one-night stand, with Hazlewood's regret-filled vocals interspersed with background organ and a short, yet powerful brass interlude.
Cowboy In Sweden is one of the best Hazlewood CDs I've heard thus far. If you are already a confirmed fan or are merely Hazlewood-curious, you can't go wrong with this.