Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood: The Bonnie and Clyde of pop, a duo that will break your heart

Picture the following scene: you are driving a convertible, with good company, through Monument Valley. Suddenly, a fabulous path opens up, a straight line all the way to Sunset Boulevard, where the Hollywood Walk of Fame awaits with all the incandescent lights and the night owls of Los Angeles. You take the path, of course; after all, that is why it has magically opened for you. During the trip, you will see the day turn into night as the landscape changes from Western to urban, from open countryside to a city that does not sleep. Now think — what is the soundtrack of that scene? Whatever you choose, I’ll tell you this: it will be almost impossible to find better music than the one that Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood made. With these two, the car that you are driving will fly like a dream.

Sinatra & Hazlewood. A duo among duos. If they are not the perfect musical couple, at least they were an extraordinary duet, one of the best artistic couples that popular music has ever produced, on par with Bob Dylan and Joan Baez in folk or Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell in soul. Their symbiosis seems made for great adventures. On one hand, a young girl, with enormous appeal in her mischievous, splendid singing, making the most of the genes that her father, Frank Sinatra, gave her. On the other, a man that is 11 years her senior, as well as her complete counterpart: dark, somber, serious, the embodiment of a certain danger.

Lee Hazlewood, singer, songwriter and producer, was hired by Frank Sinatra for one purpose: to improve the commercial presence of his singing daughter. Hazlewood managed to bring out all the talent that the young Sinatra held inside her in the first album he produced, Boots (1966). The album includes very good covers of The Beatles, Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones, but above all, it is the one that gave to the world the unbeatable These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.

However, Sinatra & Hazlewood — Nancy & Lee — teamed up to become a singing duo, and the result was even better. One look at the cover of their debut album, Nancy & Lee (1968) is enough to recognize a sort of Bonnie and Clyde of American pop. Two faces with their eyes fixed on the listener, apparently unconcerned with what is going to happen. And what happens? Top quality music. A great gamble of dramatic pop — understanding pop as what was being done in the glorious 1960s when the charts were dominated by The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Motown or the songs of the Phil Spector factory.

Nancy & Lee is a masterpiece, the best of the two albums they recorded. Sinatra and Hazlewood masterfully combine brilliant orchestral elements with lyrics that delve into the dark side of the human condition. Like that trip in the imaginary car, they unfold a lyrical universe in which feelings are experienced on the surface. One moment they are singing about the glory of fleeting love, and the next they are devastatingly alone in romance. Sinatra’s sweet, refined singing blends with Hazlewood’s lysergic, heartbroken baritone cowboy voice, which keeps purring throughout the entire album.

A perfect example: Greenwich Village Folk Song Salesman, a song in which she sings playfully, carefree, while he answers with a somewhat weary cowboy voice, as if galloping behind her. She responds by being even sillier, and he emits a feline growl that is immediately met with a giggle, all driven by some trembling trumpets, as if they were the engine of that car that goes along the endless roads towards the West Coast. Where Phil Spector, around the same time, was offering very urban street pop epiphanies, with a wall of sound that throbbed with city life, Nancy & Lee are a mix of western and road movie. They convey a cinematic air with the youthful aspiration of those luminous melodies that, wrapped in bombastic winds and strings, open the songs to a wide shot in the purest style of John Ford, where the emotional landscape sprawls.

So, imagine yourself in that car. Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood are playing. You can now drive with your eyes closed through Monument Valley to Los Angeles.

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