Born on 9 July 1929, in the town of Mannford, Oklahoma, LEE HAZLEWOOD spent his early years moving with his family between there and towns in Arkansas and Texas, where they settled long enough for LEE to attend high school. After a stint at SMU in Dallas, LEE was called into service in Korea.
After his discharge, LEE attended broadcasting school in California, and upon graduation was hired by KCKY in tiny Coolidge, Arizona. It wasn’t long before his eccentric on-air performances, which consisted of conversations between an elaborate dramatis personae with all the voices done by LEE himself, garnered him a local following. One devotee, a teenage guitarist named Duane Eddy, began dropping by to rid the station of its excess country records. LEE befriended Duane and began fleshing out some songs HAZLEWOOD had written, recording them at a local studio. The duo also began driving to Phoenix for country music shows, where they came to know the house band, particularly the young guitarist Al Casey, forging some important alliances for the years to come.
By 1955 LEE had moved to KRUX in Phoenix (where he was the first DJ in town to play Elvis), and started the Viv label as an outlet for his productions. Using a local studio as his home studio, and a phalanx of talented local players including Eddy and Casey, LEE finally struck paydirt in 1956 with his tune “The Fool”, sung by Casey’s high school chum Sanford Clark, birthing the Phoenix music scene in the process. In 1957, LEE gave up DJing for writing and producing full-time when he accepted a job as staff producer with Dot Records, and moved to LA.
