Back in the 1950s, Al Casey was a noted session guitarist and pianist whose first big claim to fame was helping Duane Eddy and songwriter/producer Lee Hazlewood develop “The Twang Heard Round the World.” Casey later picked and played on many L.A. and Phoenix sessions but also found time for his own group, the Al Casey Combo, which eventually scored minor pop success with “Surfin’ Hootenanny”.
Sidewinder is not a reissue of Casey’s past work (you can find that on a separate Bear Family Casey collection and another on Ace) — it’s actually a collection of 10 songs recorded in Phoenix in 1995. The mostly instrumental album showcases Casey on all sorts of instruments, and it’s also chock full of special guests — from David Grisman to Glen Campbell to Jody Reynolds, who sings a new version of his 1955 hit “Endless Sleep”.
The big surprise, though, is finding the deep, dark voice of the legendary Hazlewood on two tracks: “You Came a Long Way from St. Louis”, a loopy, languorously show tune, and “The Fool”, a Hazlewood-penned song that was a big hit in 1956 for Sanford Clark. After his run producing and writing for Nancy Sinatra in the 1960s — and recording several mind-boggling solo records himself — Hazlewood dropped far out of sight, resurfacing only recently on Nancy Sinatra’s 1995 tour. These two cuts, though, are his only new recordings in many years, and his voice — somewhere between a springtime thundershower and an existential gutter-cry — is still rich and powerful enough to rattle your soul.