Nancy Sinatra - Start Walkin’ 1965-1976 (Light in the Attic)

Nancy Sinatra is getting the carefully curated archive treatment by Light in the Attic and Start Walkin’ is a primer worth writing home about

Optimo’s 2002 Live at West Runton DJ mix opens with a high-pitched test tone and synthesised voice, signalling a break from reality. The orchestral lushness that follows is the means of transport beyond the infinite, as if the doors of perception have been wedged open to let the music seep out. For that music is “Some Velvet Morning” by Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood, their 1967 pop duet that occupies the very highest states of consciousness with all the druggy, dreamlike and cosmic splendour imaginable. Vacillating between jaded innocence (him) and wide-eyed experience (her) the song contains the vastness of worlds in a matter of minutes, and is certainly one for the ages.

My mum had the Nancy & Lee record (it’s now mine) and speaks fondly about my dad and her both really digging it, although I can’t recall hearing it on the stereo growing up. So I’m not going to claim any attendant hipness from being into Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood at an impossibly young age, although I am prepared to suggest that some of their psychedelia got into the water, so to speak, and that I was primed long before that Optimo mix or the appearance of “Some Velvet Morning” on the Morvern Callar soundtrack. Regardless, by the early 2000s I had got hip to Nancy & Lee and “Some Velvet Morning” in particular has never stopped speaking to me at the deepest of levels.

2021 would appear to be a good entry point for anyone interested in exploring Nancy Sinatra’s catalogue, with Start Walkin’ 1965-1976 the first long player of Light in the Attic’s planned reissue programme (including fresh pressings of Nancy & Lee and Nancy & Lee Again). As primers go, it’s a very fine one indeed, featuring the expected heavy hitters (Phaedra may get a mention) but also prepared to dig a little deeper across 23 tracks (the west coast technicolor soul of “How Are Things in California?” is a personal highlight of those I hadn’t previously encountered). Remastered and featuring extensive liner notes beautifully presented in the forthcoming physical editions, Start Walkin’ is an opportunity to open up your gates and let Nancy Sinatra step into your life.