Duane Eddy 4/2024

Duane Eddy was born in Corning, New York, on April 26, 1938. His father, Lloyd, drove a bread truck. He began playing the guitar at the age of five after hearing the cowboy singer Gene Autry. In 1951, his family moved to Tucson, and then to Coolidge, Arizona. He formed a duo, Jimmy and Duane, with his friend Jimmy Delbridge, who later recorded as Jimmy Dell. Eddy left school at sixteen and played in local bars. 

In 1957, Eddy had a weekly showcase on radio station KCKY and then a slot on a weekly hit parade television show in Phoenix, where he met met Arizona-based disc jockey, songwriter and music publisher Lee Hazlewood. Hazlewood produced the duo’s single, “Soda Fountain Girl”, recorded and released in 1955 in Phoenix, Arizona. They performed and appeared on radio stations in Phoenix and joined Buddy Long’s Western Melody Boys, playing country music in and around the city.

Eddy was not happy with his singing voice, and he devised a technique of playing lead lines on his guitar’s bass strings to produce a low, reverberant “twangy” sound instead. At the age of 19, he had acquired a 1957 Chet Atkins model Gretsch 6120 guitar from Ziggie’s Music in Phoenix, and in November 1957, he recorded an instrumental piece, “Movin’ n’ Groovin'”, which he co-wrote with Hazlewood. His backing band included saxophonist Steve Douglas, pianist Larry Knechtel, and bassist Al Casey. As the Phoenix studio had no echo chamber, Hazlewood bought a 2,000-gallon water storage tank to use as an echo chamber to accentuate the “twangy” guitar sound. In 1958, Eddy signed a recording contract with Lester Sill and Hazlewood to record in Phoenix at the Audio Recorders studio. Sill and Hazlewood leased the tapes of all their singles and albums to the Philadelphia-based Jamie Records.

“Movin’ n’ Groovin'” reached number 72 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1958. The opening riff, borrowed from Chuck Berry’s “Brown Eyed Handsome Man”, was in turn copied a few years later by the Beach Boys on “Surfin’ U.S.A.” The follow-up, “Rebel-Rouser”, featured a saxophone overdubbed by Los Angeles session musician Gil Bernal, and yells and handclaps by doo-wop group the Rivingtons. This became Eddy’s breakthrough hit, reaching number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It sold over one million copies, earning him his first gold disc.

Eddy had a succession of hit records over the next few years. His band members, including saxophonists Steve Douglas and Jim Horn, and keyboard player Larry Knechtel, were later members of Phil Spector’s Wrecking Crew. According to writer Richie Unterberger, “The singles, of which ‘Peter Gunn’, ‘Cannonball’, ‘Shazam’, and ‘Forty Miles of Bad Road’ were probably the best, also did their part to help keep the raunchy spirit of rock and roll alive during a time in which it was in danger of being watered down.”

On January 9, 1958, Eddy’s debut album, Have ‘Twangy’ Guitar Will Travel, was released. It reached number five on the album chart and remained there for 82 weeks. Duane Eddy and the Rebels appeared six times on The Dick Clark Show between 1958 and 1960. On Eddy’s fourth album, Songs of Our Heritage (1960), each track featured him playing acoustic guitar or banjo. His biggest hit came with the theme of the movie Because They’re Young in 1960, which featured a string arrangement. It reached a chart peak of number four in America and number two in the UK in September 1960, and became his second million-selling disc. Eddy’s records were consistently more successful in the UK than they were in his native United States, and in 1960, readers of the UK’s NME voted him World’s Number One Musical Personality, ousting Elvis Presley.

In 1960, Eddy signed a contract directly with Jamie Records, bypassing Sill and Hazlewood, which caused a temporary rift between Eddy and Hazlewood. The result was that for the duration of his contract with Jamie, Eddy produced his own singles and albums.
In the 1960s, Eddy launched an acting career, appearing in such films as Because They’re Young, A Thunder of Drums, The Wild Westerners, Kona Coast, and The Savage Seven, with two appearances on the television series Have Gun – Will Travel. In 1961 he signed a three-year contract with Paul Anka’s production company, Camy, whose recordings were issued by RCA Victor. In the early days of recording in the RCA Victor studios, he renewed contact with Lee Hazlewood, who became involved in a number of his RCA Victor singles and albums.

Eddy’s 1962 single release, “(Dance With The) Guitar Man”, co-written with Hazlewood, sold a million copies and earned his third gold disc. He had sold 12 million records by 1963. In 1965 he released an album of instrumental versions of Bob Dylan songs.
In the 1970s, Eddy produced album projects for Phil Everly and Waylon Jennings. In 1972, he worked with Al Gorgoni, rhythm guitar, on BJ Thomas’s “Rock and Roll Lullaby”. In 1975 a collaboration with hit songwriter Tony Macaulay and former founding member of The Seekers, Keith Potger, led to another UK top 10 record, “Play Me Like You Play Your Guitar”. The single, “You Are My Sunshine”, featuring Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, appeared in the country charts in 1977.

In 1986, Eddy recorded with Art of Noise a remake of his 1960 version of Henry Mancini’s “Peter Gunn”. It was a top 10 hit around the world, ranking number one on Rolling Stone’s dance chart for six weeks that summer. “Peter Gunn” won the Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental of 1986. It also gave Eddy the distinction of being the only instrumentalist to have had top 10 hit singles in four different decades in the UK. His 1975 top-10 hit featured a female vocal group.

The following year, the album Duane Eddy was released on Capitol. Several of the tracks were produced by Paul McCartney, Jeff Lynne, Ry Cooder and Art of Noise. Guest artists and musicians included John Fogerty, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Ry Cooder, James Burton, David Lindley, Phil Pickett, Steve Cropper, and original Rebels Larry Knechtel and Jim Horn. The album included a cover of Paul McCartney’s 1979 instrumental, “Rockestra Theme”.  

In 1992, Eddy recorded a duet with Hank Marvin for Marvin’s album Into the Light, a cover version of The Chantays’ 1963 hit “Pipeline”.
Eddy’s “Rebel Rouser” was featured in 1992 in the film Forrest Gump. Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers used “The Trembler”, a track written by Eddy and Ravi Shankar. In 1994, Eddy teamed up with Carl Perkins and The Mavericks to contribute “Matchbox” to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Country, produced by the Red Hot Organization. Eddy was the lead guitarist on Foreigner’s 1995 hit “Until the end of Time”, which reached the top 10 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. In 1996, Eddy played guitar on Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack for the film Broken Arrow.

In October 2010, Eddy returned to the UK for a sold-out Royal Festival Hall concert in London. This success prompted an album, Road Trip, for Mad Monkey/EMI, produced by Richard Hawley in Sheffield, England. The album was released on June 20, 2011, and Mojo placed it at number 37 on its list of “Top 50 albums of 2011.” Eddy performed at the Glastonbury Festival on June 26, 2011.
For an 80th-birthday tour in 2018, Eddy returned to the UK in concerts with Liverpudlian singer-songwriter Robert Vincent, performing on October 23 at the London Palladium, and October 30 at Bridgewater Hall in Manchester.

Duane Eddy died of cancer in Franklin, Tennessee, on April 30, 2024, four days after his birthday, at the age of 86.

In 1994 Eddy was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2008.