Duane Eddy, rock ’n’ roll pioneer renowned for his echo-laden twanging guitar sound – obituary
Duane Eddy, who has died a few days after his 86th birthday, was famous for his raunchy, low-slung “twanging” guitar instrumentals – distinctive and more subtle than they might at first sound – and with a series of hits in the pre-Beatles era, including Rebel Rouser (1958), Forty Miles of Bad Road (1959), Peter Gunn (1960) and (Dance With The) Guitar Man (1962), became the bestselling instrumentalist in rock history.
Eddy’s trademark was his echo-laden repertoire of growling low notes (which he could only explain by getting technical) and staccato riffs. He first hit on the “twang” when challenged to compose an instrumental.
“I thought I’ll try something high and low,” Eddy recalled, “so I wrote [his first single] Movin’ ‘n’ Groovin’ which had a high part and a low part. I didn’t expect anything to happen with it but I thought it was an interesting experiment.
“I knew the low notes recorded better and I noticed that I had more power on the low notes so that’s what I incorporated and we threw some echo on it. When I went back in to do Rebel Rouser I used the tremolo and there we had my sound and my style. Since it worked so well, I thought ‘I found it, I’ll keep it’. ”
If, as an instrumentalist, Eddy could hardly hope to rank at the forefront of popular music, he managed several successful comebacks, propelled by enthusiasts such as George Harrison and Paul McCartney, and latterly by a new – British – manager, the Sheffield guitarist and singer-songwriter Richard Hawley.
