***Newly minted from a wave of success with NANCY SINATRA, LEE HAZLEWOOD began travelling abroad, landing in Sweden in 1970, where he met director TORBJORN AXELMAN. The two embarked upon a collaboration which would produce several film and music projects beginning with Cowboy In Sweden, and continuing through Smoke and A House Safe For Tigers. The Swedish Viking Label also released two very rare but strong Hazlewood solo albums. Whereas Requiem For An Almost Lady, released in 1971, is an aching meditation on love lost (with some harrowing narration), 13, from the following Year, is a horn-laden, R&B-tinged departure from the Hazlewood formula that succeeds on the strength of its exuberantly dazed mania. Of all the Hazlewood albums coveted by collectors who seem to own every object ever made by anyone, this one really fills their drool buckets. 
During this period, Hazlewood emerged as a singer and performer inseparable from his writing and production. After hearing these '70s albums, but especially 13, one gets the feeling that Lee is perhaps the best interpreter of his own ideas, and without a doubt the albums benefit from everything he had developed up to that point: a singular signature sound synthesizing swinging cowboy shanties, the rhythmic heat of rockabilly, and soaring symphonic pop, punctuated by dark, poetic lyrics at once esoteric, witty and honest.