Random Obscurities: Lee Hazlewood’s ‘Rainbow Woman’

I saw her reflection in the shadow of the sun
Listening to the cadence of a dying drummers’ drum

Having successfully survived the fifties and sixties with a fair amount of success to his name – due to hit-fuelled collaborations with names such as Duane Eddy and Nancy Sinatra – the seventies saw Lee Hazlewood reside in Sweden, where he wrote and produced a television show together with his good friend and Director Thorbjørn Axelman.

The songs from the show, Cowboy in Sweden, later emerged as an album of the same title, and is highly regarded as his masterpiece.

This promo clip of ‘Rainbow Woman’, is a little reminder of a true gem of a song, which surprisingly didn’t make it onto the final album, an album it seemed almost destined to be part of.

Gazing at him from the blurry backgrounds we have Swedish siren Siw Malmkvist, who sang duet with psychedelia’s most notorious cowboy on a number of occasions, during these, his Scandinavian years, and would often be singing Nancy Sinatra’s parts on songs like ‘Summerwine’, and ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’, the latter sung by Lee in an even deeper baritone voice than the one on the original Phil Spector version, sung by Bill Medley of The Righteous Brothers.

Lee Hazlewood died of renal cancer on August 4, 2007, less than a year after releasing his farewell album, Death Or Cake.

Self respect is absent in a lonely man’s mirage
Love is sometimes given in a salty tear corsage
Make the Gods that made her claim her, she comes and goes and so I named her
Rainbow woman

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Words: Anders Knudsen