The iconic British music newspaper Melody Maker called him “the first true guitar superstar of the rock’n’roll era”. An unavoidable reference for names like Bruce Springsteen, George Harrison, Jeff Beck (The Yardbirds, The Jeff Beck Group), Marty Stuart or Steve Earle, Duane Eddy died of cancer this Tuesday, aged 86, in Franklin, in the state of Tennessee, United States, revealed the family.
Self-taught guitarist since the age of five, Duane Eddy In the 1950s and 1960s he would become one of the instrument’s greatest virtuosos. They gave him the title of “king of twang”, a style of playing the electric guitar that influenced generations of musicians and instrumentalists from various sides of rock: from country to surf rock, from psychedelic folk to psychobilly (a cross between punk rock, rock’n’roll and rockabilly), leaving a legacy that is still possible to recognize today. As stated in the American magazine Rolling StoneEddy even collaborated with Dan Auerbach, from the band The Black Keys, in 2017.
In your sound twangythe melodies blossomed with a vibrato and an unusual reverberation for the time. “Eddy’s sound was based on playing the main lines on the low strings of the guitar, then recording them in a way to exaggerate the echo and reverb. If he sounded like he was playing inside a giant water tank, it wasn’t by chance: he really was,” he explains in the English newspaper The Guardian journalist and music critic Michael Hann.
“When he began recording at Audio Recorders in Phoenix, Arizona, with Lee Hazlewood as producer and co-writer in 1957, Hazlewood placed it inside a giant water tank to use as an echo chamber.” And it was precisely the “cowboy psychedelic” Lee Hazlewood (1929-2007), influential composer and producer of 20th century Anglo-Saxon rock music, who catapulted the guitarist to stardom in the late 1950s, developing the style twang characteristic of Eddy – and which Hazlewood would later adapt to embody Nancy Sinatra’s great success, These boots are made for walkin’ (1965).
Between 1958 and 1963, Duane Eddy managed to have 16 singles in the top 40. Rebel-rouser, Shazam! Cannonball or Because they’re young are some of his most memorable songs. It passed through all the sales charts in the United States and the United Kingdom, until the Beatles arrived: dominance then passed to the British side, witnessing a transformation of the pop-rock music paradigm.
Still, his work has remained afloat thanks to the use of his songs in more than 30 films and television programs over the years. She even reached the top charts again in 1986, with a version of her song Peter Gunn (1960) by the British band Art of Noise.
During his career, the guitarist born in 1938 in Corning, New York, recorded more than 50 albums, including reissues, especially before the 1980s, when he began to move away from the world of music. Winner of a Grammy, he became part of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. Last year, Duanne Eddy was included in the list of the best guitarists of all time. Rolling Stone.
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