14 April 2022

Dragonflies and daffodils

Thursday music corner: At her father's urging, and with the hope of revitalising her ailing pop career, in 1967 Nancy Sinatra (b. 1940) worked with writer-producer-arranger Lee Hazlewood (1929-2007). One of the stand-out results of that collaboration, and one of the strangest singles of the 1960s, was the lush, woozy dreamscape of Some Velvet Morning, with its mixed time-signatures (Lee sings faster than Nancy) and disorienting echoes of both the grand landscapes of spaghetti Western soundtracks and the bubblegum pop of Sonny & Cher. The song featured on both Nancy Sinatra's 1967 album Movin' with Nancy and the follow-up album, 1968's Nancy & Lee, the latter of which peaked at number 13 in the Billboard chart. There have been many cover versions, including Primal Scream's recording with Kate Moss in 2002. A 2013 film featuring Stanley Tucci shares the name but is unconnected. 

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