Lee Hazlewood – My Autumn’s Done Come
Lee Hazlewood – Not The Lovin’ Kind
Lee Hazlewood – For One Moment
The end of daylight savings is a sacred event in my household. It really isn’t fall until we get that hour back. It means that my Sunday radio show goes from sunlight to sunset to night in the course of 2 hours and everything just feels right. One the songs that immediately comes to my mind around this time is Lee Hazlewood’s “My Autumn’s Done Come.” Part of it is certainly in the lyrics to the song, which sound as if the singer has come to grips with getting older, and has just given up on playing life’s silly games. But that sentiment also seems to fit the fall, more than any other season.
Additionally what attracted me to this track is that it served as the primary sample for a couple of my favorite 1990s trip-hop songs from Bristol’s Alpha. From 1997’s Come From Heaven, the sublime “Sometime Later” featuring Martin Bernard on vocals:
And the twin, and equally beautiful, “Somewhere Not Here” featuring Helen Stubbs on the vocals this time around:
For years and years I was convinced this was a Burt Bacharach sample, so silky smooth. I wasn’t shocked when I found out it was Lee Hazlewood, but I was taken aback when I finally heard “My Autumn” years after discovering Alpha. It made the shock of hearing that another track on the album, “Not The Lovin’ Kind” also was sampled by Alpha on the same album, appropriately enough as “Hazeldub” (which really should have been my clue, right?)
Hazlewood’s sound is really very rife for sampling, it’s instantly classic, but doesn’t quite sound like other aritsts of the period. I’m hoping somebody does some interesting things with “For One Moment”…unless someone already has. Either way, I was very happy to pick this up earlier in the year when I saw it on the wall at Atomic in Burbank. Nothing beats dropping the needle on Side 2 when “My Autumn’s Done Come” falls out of the speakers. Looking forward to setting up a hammock and getting my scotch and cigar in few years myself…
Cheers,
Michael