DUANE EDDY
King of twang (1938–2024)
THE first true rock’n’roll guitar hero, Duane Eddy became the benchmark for a whole generation of followers, from John Fogerty and Dave Davies to Bruce Springsteen, who cited him as “a huge influence on my guitar stylings”, the most striking example being the motoring riff of “Born To Run”. Eddy’s rich twang – picking out melodic runs on the low strings of his signature Gretsch, amplified by spacious echo – was a defining feature of pre-Beatles pop. Between 1958 and 1963, he landed nearly two dozen Top 40 hits in the US and UK: driving instrumentals forged from country, jazz, rockabilly and rhythm’n’blues.
Eddy began playing guitar aged five. By his teens, he was gigging alongside Jimmy Delbridge in his adopted hometown of Phoenix, Arizona, where he was scouted by local DJ/producer Lee Hazlewood. Repurposing a disused 2,000-gallon water tank as an echo chamber, Hazlewood co-wrote and recorded “Movin’ n’ Groovin’” as Eddy’s debut solo single in November 1957. But it was follow-up “Rebel Rouser” that proved his breakthrough, cracking the Billboard Top 10 and selling more than a million copies.
The hits flowed freely thereafter, among them “Cannonball”, “Forty, in which he and backing band The Rebels also had a cameo role.
