RIP Duane Eddy

 

Remembering 'Rebel Rouser' rock icon Duane Eddy, dead at 86

AZ Central

By Ed Masley

May 1, 2014

 

Duane Eddy was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994 on the strength of a career he launched in 1958 with the million-selling instrumental “Rebel Rouser.”

The most commercially successful instrumental artist in the history of rock 'n' roll, the Grammy-winning guitarist died peacefully on April 30, surrounded by family members in Franklin, Tennessee.

He was 86.

Born in Corning, New York, and raised in New York State, Eddy moved to Tucson then to Coolidge, Arizona, with his family as a teenager. It was while living in Coolidge that he hooked up with a DJ named Lee Hazlewood, who cut the young guitarist’s instrumental breakthrough, “Rebel Rouser,” in a Phoenix studio called Audio Recorders.

“Rebel Rouser” was the third song he and Hazlewood recorded.

How Duane Eddy and Lee Hazlewood made 'Rebel Rouser'

The first was “Soda Fountain Girl,” recorded with a friend named Jimmy Delbridge and released in 1955 as a duet by Jimmy and Duane.

In an interview with blogger Simon Nott in 2013, Eddy said of “Soda Fountain Girl,” “The first record Lee Hazlewood produced with Jimmy Dell and myself, we sang together when we were 16/17.”

The next Hazlewood session resulted in “Movin’ ’N’ Groovin’,” a less-than-subtle instrumental rewrite of Chuck Berry’s “Brown Eyed Handsome Man.” It failed to set the charts on fire, stalling at No. 72 in early 1958.

But “Rebel Rouser” was a different matter altogether. Boasting one of early rock and roll’s essential riffs, a haunting low-end melody swimming in echo, it peaked at No. 6 in 1958, and Eddy followed through with two more Top 10 singles, “Forty Miles of Bad Road” (No. 9) and “Because They’re Young” (No. 4) by 1960.

Eddy went Top 40 15 times on Billboard’s Hot 100 and sold more than 100 million records worldwide.

‘The first rock ‘n’ roll guitar god’

Released in 1958, his debut album, “Have ‘Twangy’ Guitar Will Travel,” peaked at No. 5 and spent 82 weeks on the charts. Among his more well-known recordings is the theme to “Peter Gunn,” which peaked at No. 27 on the U.S. charts in 1960 but did better in the U.K., where it peaked at No. 6.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website quotes John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival calling Eddy “the first rock and roll guitar god." The Hall of Fame goes on to note the influence of Eddy’s trademark twang in everything from “Born to Run” to the Beatles (dig the twangy low-end riffing on “I Want to Hold Your Hand”).

Eddy moved to California in the late ’60s, but he talked to the Republic in 2012 about the role the Valley played in shaping the sound of his music.

How the Arizona desert shaped Duane Eddy's twang

“The spaciousness and openness of the desert, the feel of it and the smells, shaped my music," he said. "I play like that, with big notes and open spaces. I figured out through the years that I’ve been subconsciously influenced by that.”

Although the hits dried up for Eddy after “Boss Guitar” hit No. 28 in 1963, he played guitar on Art of Noise’s version of the theme to “Peter Gunn,” a Top 10 U.K. hit in 1986. A year later, the legend’s first album in nearly a decade featured guest appearances by Fogerty, George Harrison, James Burton, Ry Cooder and Steve Cropper (of Booker T. & the M.G.’s), speaking to the lasting impact of those early records.

Published in 2004, “The Rolling Stone Album Guide” summed up the pioneering surf guitarist’s role in the early development of rock and roll.

“Twang is the word most closely associated with guitar legend Duane Eddy,” the entry began.

“And certainly that sound best summarizes his personality on record. But Eddy wasn’t all lower-register melodies, liberal tremolo and omnipresent whammy bar. His instrumentals were the original music-minus-one exercises — only the vocalist was missing. This emphasis on song construction separated Eddy from inspired ’50s primitives such as Link Wray and set a standard for the rock instrumental that flowered in the’60s when the Ventures came on the scene, and later with the advent of surf music.”

That twang, by the way, was the product of Hazlewood and engineer Jack Miller running Eddy’s guitar through a 10,000-gallon water tank set up behind their Phoenix studio.

EDDY, Duane (Duane Jerome Eddy)

Born: 4/26/1938, Corning, New York, U.S.A.

Died: 4/30/2024, Franklin, Tennessee, U.S.A.

 

Duane Eddy’s westerns – actor, musician:

A Thunder of Drums – 1961 (Trooper Eddy) [guitar]

Have Gun – Will Travel (TV) – 1961, 1962 (young cowboy, Carter Whitney Tyler)

The Wild Westerners – 1962 (Deputy Marshal Clint Fallon)

Red Dead Redemption II – 2018 [guitar]