Pray Them Bars Away: Lee Hazlewood’s “Cowboy in Sweden” Coming to CD and LP

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2016 has been a good time to be a fan of Lee Hazlewood.  The maverick artist’s work has already been celebrated this year on Ace Records’ collection Son-of-a-Gun and More from the Lee Hazlewood Songbook; here at Second Disc Records, we premiered his productions for country legend Eddy Arnold on our anthology Each Road I Take: The Lee Hazlewood and Chet Atkins Sessions 1970.  Now, Light in the Attic is continuing its Hazlewood Archive Series with the November reissue of another 1970 release: Cowboy in Sweden.  Though this isn’t the album’s first CD reissue, it promises to be the most exhaustive.

Originally issued in September 1970 on Hazlewood’s LHI label, Cowboy in Sweden was the companion record to director Torbjörn Axelman’s surreal film of the same name chronicling Lee’s journey to Sweden in hallucinogenic style.  The album was recorded over a three-year period in Los Angeles, Paris, London, and Stockholm with arrangers and musicians including Don Randi, Hal Blaine, David Whitaker and others.

Encapsulating the Hazlewood sound at its prime, Cowboy became a cult classic LP even as the film itself all but disappeared.  Light in the Attic’s reissue has been remastered from the original tapes and includes a deluxe booklet with liner notes by Hunter Lea drawing on interviews with Axelman, Randi, Blaine, Hokom, Lizell, and Shel Talmy.  Three bonus tracks appear on this set: the outtake “Me and the Wine and the City Lights,” and alternate versions of “Easy and Me” and “Pray Them Bars Away.”

LITA has Cowboy in Sweden coming in a variety of formats including:

  • Standard black-vinyl LP;
  • Standard CD;
  • Digital Download; and
  • Deluxe LP/DVD set boasting a blue vinyl LP, a 27 x 40″ folded film poster by Jay Shaw (Mondo/Death Waltz), and a DVD of Cowboy in Sweden.

The movie was previously released on DVD by LITA as part of the massive Lee Hazlewood Industries box set in 2013; the first eleven tracks on the first CD of that box also comprised the original Cowboy album.

The new reissue of Cowboy in Sweden is due on November 11 when ordering directly from Light in the Attic. Amazon is currently showing a release date of November 25.  You’ll find the tracklisting and pre-order links below!

Lee Hazlewood, Cowboy in Sweden (LHI LP 3101, 1970 – reissued Light in the Attic LITA 053, 2016)

CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
Blue Vinyl LP/DVD Set: Light in the Attic Store

  1. Pray Them Bars Away
  2. Leather and Lace – Lee Hazlewood and Nina Lizell
  3. Forget Marie
  4. Cold Hard Times
  5. The Night Before
  6. Hey Cowboy – Lee Hazlewood and Nina Lizell
  7. No Train to Stockholm
  8. For a Day Like Today – Suzi Jane Hokom
  9. Easy and Me
  10. What’s More I Don’t Need Her
  11. Vem Kam Segla (I Can Sail Without The Wind) – Lee Hazlewood and Nina Lizell
  12. Me and the Wine and the City Lights (Bonus Track)
  13. Easy and Me (Alternate Version) (Bonus Track)
  14. Pray Them Bars Away (Alternate Version) (Bonus Track)
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Joe Marchese
Joe Marchese

JOE MARCHESE (Editor) joined The Second Disc shortly after its launch in early 2010, and has since penned daily news and reviews about classic music of all genres. In 2015, Joe formed the Second Disc Records label. Celebrating the great songwriters, producers and artists who created the sound of American popular song and beyond, Second Disc Records, in conjunction with labels including Real Gone Music and Cherry Red Records, has released newly-curated collections produced and annotated by Joe from iconic artists such as Dionne Warwick, Diana Ross and The Supremes, Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, The Spinners, Johnny Mathis, Bobby Darin, Meat Loaf, Laura Nyro, Melissa Manchester, Liza Minnelli, Darlene Love, Al Stewart, Michael Nesmith, and many others.

Joe has written liner notes, produced, or contributed to over 200 reissues from a diverse array of artists, among them America, JD Souther, Nat "King" Cole, Paul Williams, Lesley Gore, Dusty Springfield, BJ Thomas, The 5th Dimension, Burt Bacharach, The Mamas and the Papas, Carpenters, Perry Como, Rod McKuen, Doris Day, Jackie DeShannon, Petula Clark, Robert Goulet, and Andy Williams.

Over the past two decades, Joe has also worked in a variety of capacities on and off Broadway as well as at some of the premier theatres in the U.S., including Lincoln Center Theater, George Street Playhouse, Paper Mill Playhouse, Long Wharf Theatre, and the York Theatre Company. He has felt privileged to work on productions alongside artists such as the late Jack Klugman, Eli Wallach, Arthur Laurents, Betty Comden and Adolph Green. In 2009, Joe began contributing theatre and music reviews to the print publication The Sondheim Review, and in 2012, he joined the staff of The Digital Bits as a regular contributor writing about film and television on DVD and Blu-ray.

Joe currently resides in the suburbs of New York City.

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2 thoughts on “Pray Them Bars Away: Lee Hazlewood’s “Cowboy in Sweden” Coming to CD and LP”

  1. All of this materiel (I think) is on the Lee Hazlewood Industries box or else I would get it. Still might anyway, looks nice.

    1. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe the alternate take bonus tracks are on the (wonderful) LHI box. The album, as indicated above, certainly is, as is “Me and the Wine and the City Lights.”

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