The Reverberation of Duane Eddy

The last time I saw Duane Eddy play guitar was in September 2013 at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. 

My friend, musician and author Steve Fishell, had organized a tribute to the pedal steel master Buddy Emmons, and Duane was one of the guests on hand. He told stories about meeting Emmons at the 1962 sessions for the album “Twang” a Country Song, where Duane took on such country classics as “Crazy Arms,” “Sugar Foot Rag” and “Weary Blues from Waiting, and then Duane picked up his red Gretsch guitar and played the beautiful “Blue Jade,” with Dan Dugmore on steel guitar and Hargus “Pig” Robbins on piano. It was one of those musical moments that echoes more than a decade later, not an extraneous note, just the exquisite experience of being in the room when a group of artists takes your breath away. Duane Eddy was a master, a link to the origins of the music we all love.

His sound was invariably described as “twangy” — that was his brand: “Duane Eddy, His ‘Twangy’ Guitar and the Rebels” — and it is true that his instantly-recognizable style had a pronounced twang factor, derived from his playing lead parts on bass strings. But twang will take you only so far; what his records had, especially the early ones on Jamie Records, was drama, momentum, a sense of scene-setting. You can hear how his deep ominous rattle might have influenced the way Ennio Morricone uses guitar in his Sergio Leone scores, as a cloud of foreboding. You can also hear how his attack made an impression on young guitarists like George Harrison, Dave Davies (“Duane Eddy was one of my most important influences”) and Pete Townshend.

Even the song titles conjured up images from revved-up teen exploitation films: “Forty Miles of Bad Road,” “Cannonball,” “Some Kinda Earthquake,” “Kommotion” (there’s a Kinks title for you), “Shazam” and, of course, “Rebel Rouser.”  They sounded like a party about to get out of control. But he could also play subtle and sweet, as on the femme-themed ballads on Girls! Girls! Girls! (which has songs like “Tuesday,” “Annette” and “Connie,” as well as a Brenda Lee medley).

If you want to hear how transformative he could be, go listen to James Darren’s record of “Because They’re Young,” the theme song from a 1960 high school movie starring Dick Clark. Darren’s rendition is swaying and swoony, an excuse for couples at the the school dance to revel in their chaste puppy love romances (Doug McClure tries to advance on his newly-pinned steady Roberta Shore, and is rebuffed with extreme prejudice). Now put on Duane Eddy’s instrumental take on the same song: it’s sexy and dramatically concise (two minutes), Duane’s aggressive guitar pressed up against a bold use of strings. It takes a cheesy little teen-idol ballad and gives it mystery. It might be the best single Duane Eddy made in his early Jamie tenure. Bruce Springsteen has called it one of his favorites, and it’s obvious why.

After his first run of hits, it was a rockier road. At RCA, Colpix and Reprise, there were various attempts to plug Eddy’s guitar into different contexts, keep him up to date. There was Duane’s Lonely Guitar plus strings, Duane going Water Skiing, Duane Twisting’ ’N’ Twangin’, Duane A Go-Go. There was even Duane Does Dylan (well, mostly Dylan: producer Lee Hazelwood snuck a couple of his copywrites in there), which has a shockingly-heavy (for 1965) take on “The House of the Rising Sun.” The albums are uneven, naturally. How many water-skiing-related instrumental songs does one really need to hear? But not one of those albums lacks must-hear tracks, like Duane’s ‘50s strip-club bump-and-grind “Shangri-La” (on Twangin’ the Golden Hits), or the title song from Dance With the Guitar Man (with the unmistakable but uncredited assist from Darlene Love and the Blossoms), or “Night Train” on The Biggest Twang of Them All. And through the ‘70s and ‘80s, there were out-of-nowhere moments like the U.K. top 10 hit “Play Me Like You Play Your Guitar,” an Elektra single of “You Are My Sunshine” (with friends like Waylon and Willie), and the remake of “Peter Gunn” with The Art of Noise.

VIDEO: The Art of Noise feat. Duane Eddy “Peter Gunn”

Duane Eddy was finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, after many years of eligibility and multiple times on the ballot. Which was kind of insane: he was one of rock’n’roll’s founding guitar heroes, and the first guy to become a solo teen idol as an instrumentalist. But there he was at the Waldorf Astoria getting his overdue recognition. The next morning, I was at LaGuardia ready to board a flight to Nashville, and Duane was sitting at the gate, waiting as well. I never approach famous people in public, but I went over, congratulated him on the previous night, and told him how I lucky I was to be in the room (I also told him I’d met his daughter on my initial Nashville trip, and how cool she was to drive me around). I could have told him, I guess, that one of the earliest singles I remember buying was his version of the theme from the movie Pepe, which I still have. 

Last night, I took out my LP of $1,000,000 Worth of Twang, Vol. II (so, $2,000,000 total?), which has “Pepe” on it, and “Gidget Goes Hawaiian,” “Drivin’ Home” (written by Duane with keyboardist Larry Knechtel) and his arrangement of “Cripple Creek.” It’s a twang that still reverberates.

• Author
• Recent Posts

Mitchell Cohen

RockandRollGlobe contributing writer Mitchell Cohen began writing about music and films for various publications in the mid-’70s, including Creem, Film Comment, Take One, Fusion, Phonograph Record Magazine. He is the co-author of Matt Pinfield’s memoir All These Things That I’ve Done, and a contributor to the website Music Aficionado. Follow him on Twitter @mitchellscohen.

Latest posts by Mitchell Cohen (see all)

• The Reverberation of Duane Eddy - May 2, 2024
• Tony Bennett and the Renaissance of the Great American Songbook - July 21, 2023
• Arista Records and the P-Funk Multiverse - August 16, 2022