Hailing from the same white-trash Texas podunk town that puked up Janis Joplin, Lee Hazlewood, in his near 40-year career, has fooled around with just about every genre you can imagine. And he's made a significant contribution to rock history each time out. For starters, he co-wrote the theme from the original "Batman" show, a song covered on record by everybody from the Ventures to the Jam. He also wrote the Astronauts' surf classic, "Baja." He practically made instrumental guitar hero Duane Eddy's career, and helped write his big monster-twang hits, "Movin' and Groovin'" and "Rebel Rouser."

It's only in recent years that young 'uns have become hip to this eccentric good old boy's formidable legacy as writer, producer and loony hybrid-country solo artist. I mean, do people realize just how important a role this warped old fuck had in engineering the very foundations of rock and roll itself? In the last few decades, Hazlewood's worked with everybody from Dean Wareham to Gram Parsons, along with inspired oddball lyricists like Beck. He even wrote and produced the majority of Nancy Sinatra's recorded output in the mid-60's.

So, recently, our pal Steve Shelley-- in his spare time between making wanky noise muzak with Sonic Youth and devouring lots of yummy Domino's Meat Lovers Pizza-- had the good taste to reissue this mad genius cowpoke's formerly impossible-to-find album, 13, on his Hoboken, New Jersey label Smells Like Records. But if you're expecting a downhome country classic in the style of Willie and Waylon, you may be disappointed.

If you go into the auditing of 13, however, with no preconceived notions concerning the content, and with a clear open mind-- or at least with the knowledge that Lee's a dippy, protean freak capable of just about anything-- then this album might make sense. Me, I'm kind of torn between enthused open-minded acceptance of this, and quizzical disappointment that it's not quite the Lee Hazlewood I expect. Is it good music? Nah, kinda sucks, really. Is it entertaining and full o' belly-scratchin', knee-slappin' fun? Well, yes.

Imagine a drunk Kris Kristofferson meets Kinky Freidman, and a stoned Leonard Cohen, all morphing into to one weird gent talk-singing over the most kitsch-bloated soul-pop imaginable. In fact, there's some pretty funny lyrics made even more hilarious when framed by this tasteless pre-disco dance music. Yep, we're talking the worst sort of saccharine, streamlined funk and cheesy white-bread jump blues here-- as if Hazlewood's backed by Average White Band, George Benson, Hugh Masekela, and Little Feat all on a single recording session. Hazlewood's voice does sound ridiculously out of its element, and of course, that's part of the overall joke. It's just that the joke's not always quite funny enough to divert your attention from the fact that the music just plain stinks.

I guess the thing about Hazlewood, though, is that no matter how awkward his vocals seem in this context (think a trailer-park Texan version of an early 70's Lou Reed), it's hard not to crack a smile at the goofy space-cowboy blather he fills his tunes with. "Toocie and the River" is an absolute Hazlewood tour-de-force, a slow blues song about "tagging along" with a lowly drug-whore-- a "streetwalkin' boozer" that Hazlewood, with a sly wink, says, "Drove me down to her level/ Smokin' good ol' opium/ Payin' dues to the devil/ All she left me was this song." Then, our one-foot-in-the-gutter narrator continues toward the climax of the heartfelt love song: "And when that moon didn't shine, lord/ Tooncie got down on her knees and made everything right."

Most of these tracks cover all the important country-related lyrical subjects and much more: the glories of drinking, smoking, doing psychedelics; and songs about drifters, difficult women, unrequited love, and inevitable dealings with low-down dirty whores. Actually, hardly a track goes by without a reference to sparkin' up a fat one. I mean, just about everything-- including merely the blue in the sky-- makes this ol' boy wanna toke up. And of course, there are also times when Hazlewood sounds like he's just making all this shit up on the spot.

It's just a shame, though, that you have to wait until the last cut for a near-perfect boogie number like "Hej, Me I'm Riding," about getting the hell outta Hicksville, USA before it permanently sucks you into its life-draining vortex. This song yields the best lines on the entire album: "Stoned with a hobo jack/ He fell off the train and I stole his shoes and I never did give 'em back/ But I don't think he ever blamed me when he caught pneumonia and died/ He just stayed too long in the same 'ol place and never got a chance to ride."

All I can say is that 13 must've puzzled a few people back in '72-- the few who actually listened to it, anyway. It's kind of subversive, cloaking Hazlewood's weird and raunchy redneck sentiments in this dopey, easy-listening, AM-radio musical exterior. Overall, you may or may not come away from the listening experience in awe of the man's prodigious but whimsical talents, but you'll at least laugh your ass off. In fact, the album's even forced me to add a more specific two-pronged rating system to fully assess the gaping aesthetic divide throughout: Musical Correctness: 2.0. Wacky Hillbilly Humor: 8.5. Do the math and there you have it.

-Michael Sandlin