When Nancy Sinatra first signed to Reprise, the record label that her father, Frank, established, there were undoubtedly whispers of nepotism and privilege. The clues were all right there. A Rat Pack member has a pretty daughter. The pretty daughter wants to sing. Then, she beats out all the other hard-working musicians for a spot on the label roster. It’s a scandalously divisive enough story, but it’s also not true.
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In reality, besides the (admittedly large) step of getting her on the label, Frank wasn’t about to let his daughter coast through her contract. “When I first signed to Reprise, my dad told me I could stay on the label…as long as I paid my way, meaning as long as my record sales covered the costs of making them,” Nancy wrote in a 2021 Instagram post.
Unfortunately, Nancy’s record sales weren’t covering the debts she was incurring. And true to his word, her father was ready to approve her being dropped from the label. (That’s show biz, kid.) Enter Jimmy Bowen and Lee Hazlewood, the two men who saved Nancy’s career with a decade-defining hit single that went No. 1 in late February 1966.
How “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’” Saved Nancy Sinatra’s Career
By the mid-1960s, Nancy Sinatra was a beloved recording artist in several countries. But for some reason—maybe her larger-than-life father being the only Sinatra that the Yanks wanted to listen to—she couldn’t recreate that success at home. As she put it in a 2025 Facebook post, “I had chart success all over the world. But [I] couldn’t get arrested in the U.S.” Without stateside success, Sinatra was in serious danger of being dropped from her record label. Her father’s influence wasn’t going to help her this time.
But her boyfriend would. Jimmy Bowen was the head of A&R at Reprise. He also happened to live next door to songwriter and producer Lee Hazlewood. In a Hail Mary attempt to save Nancy’s career, Bowen asked Hazlewood to come up with a song that could get her on the charts. Hazlewood visited Nancy at home to play her the songs in person. One of those songs was “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’”.
Nancy pointed the song out to Hazlewood, who said it wasn’t a “girl’s song.” She continued, “I told him that coming from a guy, it was harsh and abusive. But [it] was perfect for a little girl to sign. He agreed. When he left, my father, who had been sitting in the living room reading the paper, said, ‘The song about the boots is best.’”
Of course, Frank was a bit biased. The song’s hook, “These boots are made for walkin’,” was inspired by a character Frank played in the 1963 Western, 4 for Texas. Either way, though, he was right. The song was a massive, worldwide hit that’s still beloved, referenced, and used to this day. The Hail Mary worked, and Nancy stayed on Reprise before transferring to RCA in the 1970s.
Photo by Gilles Petard/Redferns
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