THE HOT NEWS AND BIZARRE STORIES FROM PLANET MOJO
Inspirational guitar great Duane Eddy left us on April 30. Phil Alexander bids farewell.
COOLIDGE, ARIZONA. 1951. A fresh-faced 13-year-old New York-born kid has just arrived in town. He takes his bike, goes exploring and discovers a new world: the desert. “I fell in love with all that space,” recalled Duane Eddy when we spoke in 2010. “You could just lose yourself out there. Musically, I could always go out into the desert with just an acoustic guitar and write a song.”
Eddy, of course, is known for that sound. The ‘twang’, as it became known. You can hear it on classic tracks like Rebel Rouser, Ramrod, Cannonball or any of the 45s from Duane Eddy’s early hot streak – the unmistakable bending of those reverb-soaked, low-end strings delivered in a classy, unadorned manner against a driving rhythm designed for maximum impact. Listen a little closer to a deeper cut like the beautiful First Love, First Tears, for example – and you hear something else: a faraway melancholy which hails straight from those desert ride-outs.
Born on April 26, 1938, in Corning, a small town in upstate New York, Eddy discovered his father’s acoustic guitar in their basement at the age of “five or six”, going electric a few years later when his aunt bought him an Electromuse lap steel and an amp. Soaking up pop and big band music, he soon discovered his own heroes in the form of country pioneers Hank Williams, Jimmie Davis and Gene Autry. At the age of 12 he made his first radio appearance when he and his classmates performed a version of ’40s classic, The Missouri Waltz, on a local station.
Radio would play a crucial role in Eddy’s development. His father, Lloyd, was managing the local Safeway store when he met Jim Doyle, a DJ on KCKY, who parlayed Duane into recording a version of Chet Atkins’ Spinning Wheel for broadcast on his early morning Farm Hour show. A more significant connection emerged when Doyle was replaced by what Eddy refers to as “a new guy who’d just gotten out of broadcasting school.” His name was Lee Hazlewood.
Eleven years older than Eddy, Oklahoma-born Hazlewood was ambitious and made the decision to manage Duane, offering to co-write and produce his records in the process. The first single the pair cut was under the moniker of Jimmy And Duane, the duo Eddy had formed with his high school pal, Jimmy Delbridge. When Hazlewood landed a job at a station in Phoenix 70 miles away, he took Eddy with him. Noting the late 1957 success of Raunchy, rock’n’roll’s first instrumental hit, he suggested his charge write something similar.
The result was Eddy’s debut 45 Moovin’ N’ Groovin’, released on the Philly-b
