NANCY SINATRA Start Walkin’: 1965-1976 LIGHT IN THE ATTIC
“He didn’t even say goodbye/He didn’t take the time to lie”
QUENTIN TARANTINO scored the opening moments of 2003’s Kill Bill: Volume 1 to Nancy Sinatra’s forlorn performance of “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)”. It’s a canny pick, even if the title of the Sonny Bono-penned number made it an obvious choice for Hollywood’s pre-eminent record-nerd auteur, who’d just given his viewers their first glimpse of Uma Thurman’s character as she’s shot in the head by her unseen lover. While Sinatra’s voice possesses a delicacy that starkly contrasts with the bloodshed to come, the lyrics hint at darker things, as do the feelings of love, hurt and resignation she conveys so chillingly alongside the trembling tremolo of Billy Strange’s guitar.
As the first of the 23 songs on Start Walkin’: 1965-1976, “Bang Bang” is again being used to begin a story about a woman who should not be underestimated. The compilation inaugurates a reissue campaign by Light In The Attic that continues later this year with newly remastered editions of Sinatra’s 1966 debut long-player Boots, 1968’s majestic Nancy & Lee and 1972’s more autumnal Nancy & Lee Again.
Covering Sinatra’s most productive years with her primary collaborator Lee Hazlewood (already the subject of his own lavish Light In The Attic campaign), relates a narrative arc that may be familiar to those who’ve long considered the Chairman ofpresents a wider, richer view of a singer who may finally be regarded as more than Hazlewood’s modeling clay or, worse yet, a well-born starlet remembered for those thigh-high go-go boots.
