Lee Hazlewood

The inspired use of an empty silo helped put Phoenix, Arizona, on the rock-and-roll map during the late 1950s. Working at the tiny Audio Recorders studio, disc jockey-turned-producer Lee Hazlewood was obsessed with emulating the power and atmosphere of the then-current hits on Chess (of Chicago) and Sun (of Memphis), but he did not have access to performers with the energy of Howlin’ Wolf and Elvis Presley or their backing musicians. A relentless perfectionist, Hazlewood experimented with the use of echo effects and found that, by placing an amplifier and a microphone in a nearby grain storage silo and then relaying the signal back to the studio, he could make any sound or instrument seem huge and atmospheric—shouts, hand claps, saxophone, or guitar. The immaculate sound of his series of hits with guitarist Duane Eddy was widely imitated at the time, and the young Phil Spector made a pilgrimage from Los Angeles to Phoenix to see how it was done. Hazlewood later moved to Los Angeles himself and masterminded an amusing and imaginative series of hits with Frank Sinatra’s daughter Nancy, including some to which he contributed his own deadpan baritone as her duet partner.