These Boots Are Made for Walkin '

Chart positions Explanation of the data

Singles

These Boots Are Made for Walkin '   DE 1  gold 03/15/1966 (20 weeks)   AT 1 04/15/1966 (12 weeks)   UK 1 02/02/1966 (14 weeks)   US 1  gold 02/26/1966 (14 weeks)

These Boots Are Made for Walkin ' is a song written by Lee Hazlewood and released by Nancy Sinatra in 1966 that became a million-seller .

prehistory

Nancy Sinatra - These Boots are Made for Walkin '

Frank Sinatra founded his own record company with Reprise Records in January 1961 , and in June of the same year his eldest daughter Nancy also received a recording contract. A total of 15 singles were released by her over the next four years, but none of them made it into the charts. That changed when the music producer Lee Hazlewood was turned on in October 1965. Nancy Sinatra's first recording under Hazlewood was So Long Babe , written by the latter , which hit the charts at # 86 when it was released in October 1965 as Nancy Sinatra's first single.

Origin of the song

Then Lee Hazlewood wrote the song These Boots Are Made for Walkin ' , which he wanted to sing himself. However, Nancy Sinatra insisted on recording the title, although Hazlewood was against producing this male song with her. He finally gave in to her insistence and left her with the title, "especially since the text sung by a woman sounds sexy and not pathetic like a man's," as Sinatra said in a 1971 interview. The lyrics of the song are about the fact that the protagonist wants to punish infidelity, lies or other mistakes of her partner by trampling over him with her boots.

admission

The instrumental line- up for the recording appointment scheduled for November 19, 1965 in the recording studios of the Western Recorders was made up of session musicians from Los Angeles known as The Wrecking Crew , namely Billy Strange , Al Casey , Tommy Tedesco and Mike Deasy (guitars), Carol Kaye (bass), Ollie Mitchell , Roy Cayton and Lew McCreary (horn section) and Hal Blaine (drums). Added to this was Chuck Berghofer with a chromatic run on the double bass. This was a spontaneous idea of ​​arranger Billy Strange, who had to overcome resistance from Chuck Berghofer: "I've never played the run in my life." This lick became the leitmotif of the song, which is repeated before each verse and four to six finger positions apart. In addition to the double bass, an electric bass from Carol Kaye was used. One take was sufficient , the minor errors of which were no longer corrected.

success

In its December 25, 1965 edition, Billboard believed the song with its unusual instrumentation would have hit potential. The single These Boots Are Made for Walkin '/ The City Never Sleeps at Night (Reprise # 432), composed and produced by Hazlewood, was released in February 1966, and on February 26, 1966, it reached number one on the charts and for one week sold a million copies in eight weeks. In March 1966, the single was awarded a gold record . Over 250,000 records were sold in Great Britain and more than 500,000 records in Germany. The single reached number one in seven other countries and sold over four million times worldwide. In 2006 the song was voted number 114 in Pitchfork Media's list of the best 60s hits.

Sexual context

Shortly after the piece was published, the media associated it with a sadomasochistic aura. In 2005, Nancy Sinatra confirmed the sexual context in an interview with the gay magazine "Queer.de": "That has a lot to do with the attraction of this song."

Cover versions

The song, whose publisher was Mickey Goldsen , was covered by stylistically very different artists: Billy Ray Cyrus , Loretta Lynn , The Supremes , Leningrad Cowboys , Jessica Simpson , 7 Seconds , The Meteors , Megadeth and Government Issue tried their hand at the piece. Coverinfo.de lists 75 versions. During the Vietnam War , the song became very popular among American soldiers, which is why it was also used in Stanley Kubrick's film Full Metal Jacket .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Charts DE Charts AT Charts UK Charts US
2. ^ Charles Bronson, The Billboard Book of Number One Hits , 1985, p. 194.
3. ↑ Rolling Stone magazine, December 27, 1971, interview with Nancy Sinatra.
4. ↑ The Guardian, Aug. 6, 2007, Obituary: Lee Hazlewood
5. ^ Joseph Murrells, Million Selling Records , 1985, p. 232.
6. ^ Günter Ehnert: Hit balance sheet - German chart singles 1956-1980 . 1st edition. Verlag popular music-literature, Norderstedt 2000, ISBN 3-922542-24-7 , p. 446 .
7. ↑ New York Post Weekend Magazine, June 4, 1966: Nora Ephron, The Name - And a New Ingredient .
8. ↑ Queer.de The Sinatra and its gay fans, interview by Jan Gebauer
9. ↑ Obituary at Variety  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
10. ↑ Billy Ray Cyrus http://www.cd-lexikon.de/album_billy-ray-cyrus-some-gave-all.htm