Lee Hazlewood - Poet, Fool Or Bum/Back On The Street Again (EMI - 1973/Maverick - 1977)

Poet, Fool Or Bum and Back On The Street Again are certainly not Lee Hazlewood most revered albums. Poet, Fool Or Bum was greeted by a one word review by the NME ("bum") while Back On The Street Again, recorded in FM hard rock band Scorpions studios in Germany for radio programmer Bobby Bobcine, was just ignored. The album only came out in Sweden, Holland and Germany. Poet, Fool or Bum deserves clearly to be rehabilitated to its real value and is a good Lee Hazlewood record. Eveything we come to like about him is present here. His deep voice from out of grave, his lush arrangements between pop and country. The only things missing are duos with girls. You can find duos with girls on Back On the Street Again but the production work sounds just too cheesy most of the times. It was smelling the end for the great Lee Hazlewood. He never really came back but never gave up nor sold out.

 Download => Lee Hazlewood - Poet, Fool Or Bum/Back On The Street Again

Lee Hazlewood - The LHI Years: Singles, Nudes & Backsides (1968-71) (Light In The Attic - 2012)

LHI stands for Lee Hazlewood Industries. The label was created by the singer in 1967 to support his own releases and a few others. IN 1971, the adventure was over. This compilation focuses on the sides released by Lee during this three years ventures as singles or on the albums The Bed, Cowboy In Sweden, Requiem For An Almost Lady and The Cowboy & The Lady. You can find as well a previously unreleased song, I Just Learn To Run. For those who still doubted, those 17 magnificent songs, between luxuriant country and magnificately crafted and orchestrated pop, prove that Lee Hazlewood was one of the brightest composer and musician of the era. The record cover is brilliant and sums up perfectly what's inside. One of the best new record I bought this year.

 Download => Lee Hazlewood - The LHI Years

Dolly Parton - Coat Of Many Colors (RCA - 1971)

Dolly Parton - Coat Of Many Colors

After a Neil Young post that nobody read, nothing beats a country music one. But country music of the best kind, not that shitty shiny redneck Nashville shit. Coat Of Many Colors made of Dolly Parton a superstar and an American icon for pretty good reasons. Its 12 songs are just beautifully written with a raw country pop twist in the production similar to Johnny Cash. Dolly has that raucous twist in her voice, a raucous twist of a woman that, despite her young age (she was around 25 at the time and had already more of ten years in the music biz under her belt) saw her share of shit happening before music kept her out of abusive poverty. Country music is here only sugar put over wounds of the Deliverance kind. Rock'n'roll.