DUANE EDDY
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1955–2011 |
Early rock’n’roll |
Peter Gunn (1959) |
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Album
released: 1958 |
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Tracks: 1) Lonesome Road; 2) I Almost Lost
My Mind; 3) Rebel-’Rouser; 4) Three-30-Blues; 5) Cannon Ball; 6) The Lonely
One; 7) Detour; 8) Stalkin’; 9) Ram Rod; 10) Anytime; 11) Moovin’ ’n Groovin’; 12) Loving You. |
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REVIEW
Far
more important than the single itself was Eddy’s lucky acquaintance with Lee
Hazlewood, who had only just started a career as a disc jockey in Arizona,
where Eddy was living. Hazlewood was almost ten years older than Eddy, but
both of them started their musical career at about the same time (Hazlewood
used to be a medical student and then served in the Army during the Korean
War), so it is quite natural that when Duane recorded ‘Soda Fountain Girl’
and Lee produced it, neither of the two did a particularly good job. What is
nowhere near as natural is that both went on to display remarkable talents —
and, for that matter, the role of Hazlewood in shaping the Duane Eddy legend
cannot be underestimated; it is essentially comparable to that of George
Martin for the Beatles, albeit on a smaller scale, of course. |
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The innovative instrumental sound that Duane came up
with required two ingredients: a special playing technique and clever
production. The technique was all Duane’s, as he devised the famous «twangy»
way of playing lead melody on the guitar’s bass strings, making them vibrate
like a Jew’s harp and achieving a darker, deeper, denser sound without making
it feel too aggressive or rebellious. The production was Hazlewood’s, as he
compensated for the lack of an echo chamber in Phoenix’s studios by purchasing
a huge used-up water tank and installing it as an adequate substitute — this
was used for Eddy’s very first single involving the «twangy» technique,
‘Moovin’ ’n Groovin’ (yes, moovin’
with two o’s, as in moo; this is
the way the title is spelled on both the original single and the LP, though
almost everybody now forgets the second o
when talking about the song). Together, they created a tiny bit of magic that
would often be successfully imitated, but never truly recaptured in the exact
same way. ‘Moovin’ ’n Groovin’ may not have invented surf-rock
(at the very least, there were obviously no ideas to associate it with
surfing in any way, and the state of Arizona is hardly the best location to
come up with surfing-related ideas in the first place), but it did invent and
even contextualize a new sound. The opening ringing riff was brazenly stolen
by Eddy from Chuck Berry’s ‘Brown Eyed Handsome Man’ — which is all the more
ironic considering that Eddy later grumbled about the Beach Boys re-stealing
it for ‘Surfing USA’ (a song that, consequently, plunders not one, but two Chuck Berry compositions at the
same time). But once the riff has delivered its fanfare, the sound quickly
changes to Eddy’s «twang» — the audio equivalent of watching Chuck Berry
duckwalk across a hedgerow of distorting mirrors. The low, quasi-grouchy, wobbly,
blurring tone of the guitar gives off a strange, proto-psychedelic effect
without seriously lowering the fun quotient. Also of note is the equally
quirky distorted sax solo from Plas Johnson: Duane liked the saxophone, and
would frequently employ sax players (most often, Steve Douglas, who would
later play on Pet Sounds and
several Dylan albums) to provide nice sonic contrast with all the guitar
twang. Unfortunately, the composition stalled at #72 on the
charts, and it was not until the next release that Duane Eddy became a
national sensation — although, as is often the case, that next release would
be, in my opinion at least, quite inferior to its predecessor.
‘Rebel-’Rouser’, which, according to Eddy himself, was loosely based on a
sped-up interpretation of Tennessee Ernie Ford’s ‘Who’s Gonna Shoe Your
Pretty Little Feet’, is a melodically trivial country dance number, whose
main point of attraction — a «battle» between Eddy’s twang and Gil Bernal’s
sax blasts — is utterly minimalistic in nature, and quite repetitive. But
maybe because it was faster, and featured overdubbed handclaps and cheer-up
vocals from the Sharps (soon to be known as the Rivingtons of
‘Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow’ fame), it did a better job of capturing the public
interest, climbing all the way to #6 on the charts and even achieving
commercial success across the Atlantic, starting off the UK’s lengthy and
loyal romance with Duane Eddy. Maybe this simply means that sometimes less means
more; maybe it means that people are downright strange; maybe they did a
better job with promotion that time around — or, maybe, all three reasons. At the very least, Eddy has to be commended for
refusing to release the oddly mistitled ‘Mason Dixon Lion’ as the sequel to
‘Rebel-’Rouser’ against Hazlewood’s advice, claiming that the song sounded
way too similar to its predecessor. Indeed, each of the next three singles,
all of which are included on his first LP, have their own specific features.
‘Ramrod’ (a re-recording of an earlier version credited to «Duane Eddy and
his Rock-a-billies» in 1957) is straightforward, insistent rock’n’roll in the
vein of people like Eddie Cochran; ‘Cannonball’ is more of a nod in the
direction of Bo Diddley, albeit with a rather poppy smoothing out of the Bo
Diddley riff and comic yakety-sax thrown in for good measure; and ‘The Lonely
One’ is a light-epic country-western ballad, gently nudging you in the
direction of the rising sun on the horizon. All three exploit the «twang»
style in slightly different ways, and all three are fun, if not particularly
earth-shaking. From a certain point of view, Duane Eddy was a
one-trick pony, and he and Hazlewood were never shy about exploiting that
pony — many of the singles were directly credited to «Duane Eddy and his
‘twangy’ guitar», and they even inserted the word ‘twangy’ into the title of
the LP, despite it breaking the perfect symmetric balance of Have Guitar Will Travel. But it is
also worth your while to take a listen to the entire album, which shows that
Eddy’s musical preferences extended well beyond what was showcased on the
A-sides of his singles. Thus, he was no stranger to slow, soulful blues in
the vein of Ray Charles — ‘Stalkin’, the B-side to ‘Rebel-’Rouser’, takes the
opening riff of ‘Sinner’s Prayer’ as reference and builds up a deep groove of
hysterical distorted saxes, pianos, and gospel background vocals. On the
other side of the spectrum, ‘Three-30-Blues’ is more of a regular 12-bar
blues-de-luxe, sort of a «B. B. King goes twangy» vibe and, honestly, not at
all inferior to whatever B. B. himself was playing at the time. Ivory Joe
Hunter’s R&B classic ‘I Almost Lost My Mind’ is given an upbeat pop
flavor; and for the sakes of sweet romance, there is a twangy instrumental
cover of Elvis’ ‘Loving You’, with Eddy’s low-pitch guitar notes a perfect
fit for the King’s deep voice. (In a way, you could probably call that cover
the big old grandmother of all surf-pop ballads). Admittedly, not even the best songs on this album
could be said to take my breath away — Duane Eddy had good taste, did not
like to repeat himself too much, and invented his own style of playing, but
that same style also had him chained and prevented from seriously letting his
hair down even when the rambunctious nature of the performed tunes demanded
it; besides, his playing technique was limited and he was much better at
rigidly churning out repetitive riffs than taking off and going into some
less predictable direction — a solid prototype for the Ventures or the
Shadows (actually, I think Nokie Edwards would beat him in a creativity
competition). But you can still feel the freshness of the playing style even
sixty-plus years after the fact — and there is a certain aura of «dark
sweetness» to Eddy’s twangy tone which you could hardly get from anybody
else. Taken in small dozes, Duane Eddy is fun — and I’d say that a 12-song LP
running for less than 30 minutes is precisely the kind of small doze that
might endear the guy to you, if you give it a chance. |
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Album
released: May 1959 |
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Tracks: 1) Peter
Gunn; 2) Only Child; 3) Lover; 4) Fuzz; 5) Yep!; 6) Along The Navajo
Trail; 7) Just Because; 8) Quiniela; 9) Trouble In Mind; 10) Tuxedo Junction;
11) Hard Times; 12) Along Came Linda. |
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You
know, maybe you should just ignore whatever was written in my review of Duane
Eddy’s first LP: the more I listen to his early records, the more I am
convinced that nobody played instrumental
rock’n’roll better than Eddy’s Rebels at the tail end of the 1950s. Just
because it was all so low-key, and because Eddy’s twangy guitar rarely gets
square in your face, and because the sound is comparatively clean and glossy
next to, say, Link Wray, does not take away the tightness, classiness, and
unpredictability of the music. It’s just that most of it gives off an
«evening vibe», best listened to in darkness and solitude, rather than the
«endless party vibe» of the Ventures — but if you manage to get in the mood,
30 more minutes of Duane Eddy at his peak is the epitome of modestly-sublime. |
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It is doggone difficult to even properly reconstruct
the lineup of the Rebels at the time: original LP and even early CD issues
list none of the players other than Duane, and to procure a proper
sessionography for the man, you still need to go to the library or do some
super-sleuthing. But at least the back cover of the latest LP re-issue tells
us that in March 1959, when these tracks were recorded, the band included
Corkey Casey on rhythm guitar, Buddy Wheeler on electric bass, Jimmy Simmons
on upright bass, Al Casey on piano, Mike Bermani on drums, and Plas Johnson
and Steve Douglas on saxes (no idea who plays on which track, though). Lee
Hazlewood still took care of production, and co-wrote most of the material
with Duane. It’s all relevant, because these tracks are a collective work,
and the wholesome groove worked out by the band is no less important than
Eddy’s guitar presence — in fact, I would say that Eddy’s guitar presence is
almost surprisingly modest, seeing how often he cedes the spotlight to his
sax players (and, less often, his piano and bass players). Formally, this
should be more like The Rebels
Featuring Duane Eddy than Duane
Eddy and The Rebels. And nowhere more so than on the opening track, which
is probably still one of Eddy’s best-remembered hits — Duane and Lee’s
reworking of Henry Mancini’s ‘Peter Gunn’ theme. While the original version
(which, by the way, also featured Plas Johnson on sax, though some sources
say that on Duane’s version it is actually Steve Douglas blowing the
instrument) was certainly no slouch, Eddy’s deep, grumbly twang, multiplied
by the bassline-in-unison, takes it even closer to proto-heavy metal
territory — and as for the sax part, it is much more pronounced in his
version, actually giving it its own voice rather than drowning it in the mix
(the original had the main theme played by a big brass section, but here the
saxophone takes care of both the theme and the improvised soloing).
Basically, Eddy and Hazlewood just took this superb piece of swaggy, but
humorous musical menace and gave it its independence from the status of a TV
show theme; in their hands, it sounds almost ahead of its time, just a
mammoth jazz-metal groove predating a lot of mid-to-late Sixties prog-rock
excitement. Consequently, the easiest, and most natural, thing
in the world is to define Especially
For You as «that album with ‘Peter Gunn’ on it and some forgettable stuff»,
as most people who actually took the trouble to spin the entire LP usually
do. Even the album’s second-best known track, the Eddy-Hazlewood original
‘Yep!’, which was originally released as the B-side to ‘Peter Gunn’ and then
as its own A-side, feels like a slight, joyful party-style piece of fun in
comparison — although it largely follows the same formula, establishing a
firm mid-tempo guitar / bass groove over which the sax player is given full
licence to do his thing. But unlike Mancini’s theme, this one is nowhere near
as aggressive — even despite all the «twang», the theme in general is more
reminiscent of vaudevillian R&B: speed it up and you get a good backing
track for a good old Coasters comedy number. It’s loud, rambunctious, a lot
of fun, but you don’t exactly punch holes through brick walls with it the
same way you do with the ‘Peter Gunn’ jackhammer. But if you persist long enough to give Especially For You two or three
listens, eventually it may begin to win over you, like it did over me, through
the sheer power of its diversity and imagination. Just look at this: ‘Peter
Gunn’ is followed by ‘Only Child’, a slow, soulful blues tune with guitar,
sax, and piano taking solo turns, competing with each other in who can come
out with the sharper and shriller sound (well, actually, only the guitar and
sax; Al Casey on piano plays it smooth and subdued in contrast). Then, out of
nowhere, jumps out ‘Lover’, a short jazzy bit with lightning-fast and oddly
processed guitar playing which immediately brings to mind the style of Les
Paul’s early 1950s sonic experiments (one of the weirdest guitar sounds ever
invented — while most people only remember Les Paul as a guitar builder, for
obvious reasons, he was also an inimitable musical innovator... well, scratch
«inimitable», since Duane here does a note-perfect imitation of his style on
1950’s The New Sound). Then it’s
on to ‘Fuzz’, a rhythmically complex and confusing mix of R&B and kiddie
music; on to ‘Yep!’, which I already described; and, finally, an instrumental
take on the old country ditty ‘Along The Navajo Trail’, with a
strings-and-backing-vocals shift from the perennial sax for a change. And
that’s just Side A. Individually, each of these five tracks does not
amount much to anything, but together, they work a bit of strange magic
(think ahead to the Abbey Road
suite or something like that) — Duane’s moody «twang» is the glue that keeps
it all together, but even without focusing on the twang, it feels like a
small, dollhouse-ish musical universe where jazz, blues, pop, country, and
R&B all come together in a light-hearted, but adorable synthesis. I am
pretty sure that this achievement would be unachievable without the vision of
Lee Hazlewood behind the controls, but this should hardly be surprising: few,
if any, great albums made by great guitarists are able to pass into legend on
the creative strength of the guitar playing alone. And if Lee Hazlewood could
even make the usually more-wooden-than-wood-itself Nancy Sinatra come alive,
what wouldn’t he be able to achieve
in collaboration with a real talent such as Eddy’s? On to the second side of the album, which greets us
with another Coaster-ized version of a country-rock’n’roll classic (‘Just
Because’, which we mostly know in the Elvis version), throws in another bit
of playful, but melancholy blues (‘Trouble In Mind’), travels through a
downhome reinvention of Glenn Miller’s big band standard ‘Tuxedo Junction’, and
ultimately winds down on a soft, romantic note when the rhythm section goes
home and only the strings and backing vocals remain to accompany Eddy’s
little good-night-style serenade of ‘Along Came Linda’. The major highlight
on Side B, however, is the oddly-titled ‘Quiniela’ which, as can be seen from
the alternate take included in the bonus tracks on the CD edition, began life
as a variation on the old blues of ‘St. James’ Infirmary’, but ended up
becoming a lengthy Latin-tinged jazz workout, with Eddy delivering a sparse,
but beautifully bitter and gloomy passage (sax, piano, and bass solos are also
decent, but they don’t seem to get that much payoff from their hush-hush
attitude here as Duane does). In short, one thing this record can never be accused
of is monotony — an accusation which is usually hard to evade for an
instrumental pop album, and would seem to be even harder to evade for a
guitar player known for some particularly idiosyncratic style or technique,
like Eddy. I am actually pretty sure that these albums would have more
recognition, as actual albums, had
they been credited to «Duane Eddy and Lee Hazlewood», given the critical
reverence typically paid to the latter (as such, I’m pretty sure a lot of
people do not even remember the close partnership between the two — I
certainly knew nothing of it when I had my first share of Duane Eddy listening).
But even without it, all you have to do is not try to focus as hard on the
individual tracks as on the transitions
between them, which really give the impression of Duane and Lee as Don
Quixote and Sancho on some unpredictable journey, never knowing where the
road is going to take them the very next minute. |
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Album
released: November 1959 |
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Tracks: 1) My Blue Heaven; 2) Tiger Love
And Turnip Greens; 3) The Last Minute Of Innocence; 4) Route No. 1; 5) You
Are My Sunshine; 6) St. Louis Blues; 7) Night Train To Memphis; 8) The
Battle; 9) Trambone; 10) Blueberry Hill; 11) Rebel Walk; 12) Easy. |
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Eddy’s
third LP for the Jamie label tends to get the shaft from retro-reviewers
because (a) it doesn’t really do anything that had not already been done
before and (b) it is not distinguished by any stand-out singles, such as
‘Moovin’ And Groovin’ or ‘Peter Gunn’. In fact, when it was released some
time around the Christmas season of 1959, it did not have any tracks on it
that were previously released as singles — although ‘My Blue Heaven’ did end
up as an A-side next year, and both ‘Rebel Walk’ and ‘The Battle’ would also
appear on 45"s throughout the early Sixties. |
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This disappointment is understandable, but only
inasmuch as one might hold unrealistic expectations for Eddy to keep on
revolutionizing the sound of the electric guitar for ever and ever, which is
not the way it worked in the Fifties — once you got your signature sound that
separated you from everybody else, you usually stuck to it, milking the
potential of the formula to the very last drop. Bottomline is, Eddy’s
discography past his original line of great singles is only worth exploring if you seriously dig his style and want to
savor its various nuances — but if you do, it’s not a particularly ungrateful
task, since there are plenty of such nuances, even on such formally
undistinguished albums as this one. The oddly titled "Twangs" The "Thang" did at least mark some
important changes in the Rebels’ lineup — changes that will be of interest to
genuine aficionados of the classic rock era, since they involved adding Larry
Knechtel on piano and Jim Horn on saxophone, both of whom would go on to
become some of the most in-demand session players through the next decade. Not
that this radically shifts the sound or anything: Horn plays in much the same
paradigm as Steve Douglas, providing a lively, comically tinged high-pitched
counterpart to Duane’s grumbly guitar twang, and it would take a very acute
ear to spot any stylistic differences from earlier times. However, he does
switch to flute on several tracks, particularly the relaxing midday-walk
shuffle of ‘Trambone’, which adds a bit of variety. Another important addition is the gospel choir of
the Evelyn Freeman Singers, regularly featured throughout the album; Eddy had
always loved his female backup singers, and this time around he almost goes
overboard with them, though there is certainly no danger of turning the
record into a gospel album — the man loves his rock’n’roll heart too much for
that. One of the ladies occasionally takes lead vocals, most notably on the
weird waltz ‘The Last Minute Of Innocence’, with an ecstatic vocal
performance that sometimes lands in the whistle register — if one so desires,
one might think of it as a great-grandfather to ‘The Great Gig In The Sky’,
except that the vibe here is undeniably positive rather than epic-tragic...
hmm, what could that title possibly
mean, I wonder? Was Eddy trying to convey... something dirty? On the really rockin’ front, we have ‘Tiger Love And
Turnip Greens’ (trust Lee Hazlewood to come up with a title like that!), with
its breakneck-jumpin’ Benny Hill vibe and particularly thick,
proto-Motörhead «guitar-as-bass» tone; ‘Rebel Walk’, a dark bluesy
promenade probably drawing its influence from the Chicago scene, but adding
some macabre vaudeville to the atmosphere with more of those ghostly banshee
lead vocals; and a pumped-up version of the country classic ‘Night Train To
Memphis’, which sets the same vibe as ‘Tiger Love’ but without any
particularly memorable guitar lines. However, on the whole the record feels
relatively relaxed — and even more than on the previous two, you can feel the
steady country hand of Hazlewood pointing out most of the directions in which
his good friend Duane should be going. Some of these directions are utterly predictable (it
doesn’t take a lot of imagination to understand how ‘My Blue Heaven’ or ‘You
Are My Sunshine’ would sound given the Duane Eddy treatment), others slightly
less so — ‘Route #1’, co-credited to Eddy, rhythm guitarist Corkey Casey, and
Jim Horn, starts off with a cheerful pop riff, then proceeds into more jazzy
territory, not unlike something you’d hear on a Roland Kirk or a really early
Jethro Tull record (largely due to Horn actively dueting on flute with Eddy —
it’s quite a sonic delight to hear them play in unison). The same flute adds
an extra dimension to ‘Blueberry Hill’: Eddy does the main melody on twangy
guitar, with Horn taking over the bridge section on flute, then annexing the main melody again —
only on sax this time, then Eddy
takes over once again but in a much higher pitch, with Knechtel supporting
this entire battle on piano and the ghostly female vocal providing backup...
say what you want, but this is a pretty dang creative approach to an
ultra-familiar tune. Overall, as the conclusive block to Eddy’s early
trilogy of LPs, The "Twangs"
The "Thang" has much more to offer than immediately meets the
eye. The new kinds of arrangements, flutes and vocals and all, add a
much-needed whiff of artsiness and may, indeed, be more important to the
understanding of Lee Hazlewood’s artistic development rather than Eddy’s; and
even if this is still formula, as is most explicitly indicated even in the
title of the LP, it’s got taste, class, commitment, and a willingness to be
open to outside influences. One can only wonder why Eddy’s last single to be
released in the Fifties was not one of the better tracks from this record,
but a fairly generic instrumental take on ‘My Bonnie’ (re-titled ‘Bonnie Came
Back’ for a more optimistic vibe) — maybe there was some unwritten law about
every rocker on Earth having to cover ‘My Bonnie’ before the clock strikes
twelve on December 31, 1959. One last word about the album — it’s got some really bizarre original liner notes to
it, with each song title accompanied by an impressionistic modernist verbal
description, stream-of-consciousness style, something you might expect to
find on a Dylan record but hardly on an innocent little record of
instrumental «twang-pop». Again, I ascribe this twist to the odd workings of
Lee Hazlewood’s unpredictable mind; maybe he thought this could count as a
small step in the direction of bridging the gap between simplistic pop music
and Art. I mean, anybody who’d look at the front cover of the LP would only
see the friendly face of a smiling rock’n’roll chap; but look at the back and
you’ll feel like you’re staring at an avantgarde jazz record, trying to find
the perfect verbal reflection for the moods and vibes of each track. It’s a
little inadequate in that most of the tracks do not really qualify for such
«exclusive verbal treatment» — but still a fairly unprecedented approach to a
simple pop album in a decade when simple pop hardly ever tried to become
anything other than simple pop. |
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Album
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Tracks: 1) Cripple Creek; 2) Riddle Song;
3) John Henry; 4) Streets Of Laredo; 5) Prisoner’s Song; 6) In The Pines; 7)
Ole Joe Clark; 8) Wayfarin’ Stranger; 9) Top Of Old Smokey; 10) Mule Train;
11) Scarlet Ribbons; 12*) Kommotion; 13*)
Theme For Moon Children; 14*) The Girl On Death
Row; 15*) Words Mean Nothing; 16*) Pepe; 17*) Lost Friend. |
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1960
promised to be a good year for Eddy: although the very nature of his output
usually prevented his recordings from top chart positions, demand and
admiration for them in the era when soft and melodic rock’n’roll completely
won over its rough and rowdy variant kept at a steady level. Thus, in
December ’59, Duane jumped on the already crowded ‘My Bonnie’ bandwagon,
releasing a spirited version of ‘Bonnie Came Back’ with a classy twang guitar
/ Jim Horn-powered sax duet, propelled by mini-drum solos; the song climbed
all the way to #26 despite most of the population probably already knowing
that melody by heart through countless versions (the most recent being Ray
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Next came a bit acting part in the teen-and-teacher
drama Because They’re Young, a
movie that was somewhat daring for its time for its mildly daring (for 1960,
probably smashingly daring) depiction
of sexual relations, especially when one considers that the main role was
played by Dick Clark (then again, Dick Clark did have a fully conventional
image, but was very well known for using it to his advantage while promoting
all sorts of unconventional artists). The movie has preserved for us a very
rare piece of footage of a young Duane Eddy playing his guitar on ‘Shazam!’, another
minor hit from the tune smithery of Eddy and Hazlewood, though hardly
original, as it is basically just another yakety-sax oriented country-rock
dance tune without a particularly outstanding hook. Even more lucrative for
Eddy was the title track to the movie, a lushly orchestrated pop ditty
co-written by a bunch of guys including Aaron Schroeder (one of Elvis’
primary composers); I think that Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman later nicked both
the main rhythm and the main twangy riff for their own ‘Little Sister’, which
takes a little effort to notice because atmospherically, ‘Little Sister’ is
gritty and «dangerous» (one of the very few cases where we get to see a
post-Army Elvis actually bare his teeth), whereas ‘Because They’re Young’ has
a celebratory atmosphere throughout, and Eddy merely acts here as the
proverbial «first violin» within the defined limits of a symphonic orchestra.
Stilted as it is, it goes without saying that Duane Eddy’s instrumental
version of ‘Because They’re Young’ is far preferable to the milk-and-honey
vocal version of James Darren from the same year (as featured in the movie),
or the later UK cover by Helen Shapiro — yet at the same time, it is only
with bitter irony that one might be allowed to react to the fact that
‘Because They’re Young’ became the biggest commercial hit of Duane Eddy’s entire
career. Although the next single, ‘Kommotion’, released in
August 1960, only went to #78 where ‘Because They’re Young’ reached #4, I
would insist that in a perfect world those numbers should be reversed — for
one thing, the use of strings on this
instrumental is nothing short of breathtaking, as opposed to the highly
conventional orchestration of the movie tune. Here, the guitar is holding an
actual dialog with the strings (trialog
if you throw in the hyper-active saxophone, which simply refuses to shut up
and go away even after it’s had its mid-section spotlight), and in between
the three, they really create a busy atmosphere of hustlin’ and bustlin’, with
the guitar as a fat old bumble-bee flying around its business on the lawn and
the strings as a herd of dragonflies flanging the bumble-bee from all sides.
It’s fast, fun, unpredictable, and creative as heck, easily the best song of the year to come out
of the Eddy-Hazlewood workshop. The slower, bluesier ‘Theme For Moon
Children’ on the B-side is also a somewhat weird combination of stinging
blues-rock guitar and odd orchestration that regularly fluctuates between
generic sentimental Hollywood and proto-psychedelic Eastern vibes — just wait
past the deceptive quasi-Tchaikovsky opening and you’re in for another
creative and puzzling arrangement. All of this preludial information is important to
understand just how serious a contrast all of that single-oriented activity
makes with Duane Eddy’s fourth LP (and, temporarily, the last to be produced
as a collaboration with Hazlewood). Fans were most likely expecting another
collection of danceable twang-guitar instrumentals; but Duane and Lee had
something completely different in store for them. Not only does Songs Of Our Heritage consist
completely of «oldies», reimagined and rearranged in accordance with the
artists’ more «contemporary» vision — but it also bypasses Eddy’s usual
twangy formula, instead featuring the artist almost entirely switch to
acoustic guitar and... uh, banjo? Really? It is this initial impression, I suppose, that is
responsible for the album being almost completely bypassed and disregarded in
the (already seriously overlooked) Duane Eddy discography as a whole. As in,
who would ever want to hear Duane Eddy raising banjo hell on ‘Cripple Creek’,
or leading us in an ultra-slow, pensive, gently picked acoustic rendition of
‘On Top Of Old Smokey’? Isn’t that, like, Pete Seeger’s turf or something? We
thought we were in Phoenix, Arizona; why are we in Greenwich Village all of a
sudden? And why the hell are more than half of the songs featuring Jim Horn
on flute rather than saxophone?
("Apparently flute is a big part
of our heritage", cynically comments one of the mini-reviewers on
RYM). Needless to say, upon my first listen to the record
I was tempted to dismiss it for good as one of those failed experiments in
«broadening one’s horizons» that so frequently mar the careers of solid
one-dimensional artists who are incapable of working outside an established
formula, but occasionally try to do so just to confirm the rule. But then I
thought, well, it is still a Lee
Hazlewood production, and Lee Hazlewood is not really one of the guys with a
generic and conventional approach to everything he does — surely there must
be something special about these
arrangements. And subsequent listens proved that there is indeed; you just
have to let it sink in, soak up, and settle down. It doesn’t hurt, either, to
actually pay attention to at least a few of the tracks instead of just
letting them serve as background music for chores, which, I think, is
precisely how most people who ever put this album on must have always treated
them. As a typical example, take Eddy’s and Hazlewood’s
arrangement of the traditional ‘In The Pines’, which most of us probably know
as Nirvana’s ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night?’ prior to checking out
Leadbelly’s version. It begins with a somber one-note bass riff and an
equally ominous circular little melody played by the flute, before plunging
into the main melody, lazily picked by Eddy on the banjo and echoed by a
minimalistic vibraphone part, whose lightness complements the darkness of
the bass. After one verse, the banjo melody is taken over by the flute, while
the bass suddenly switches from slow one-note pinging to a frenzied circular
run — echoing the flute opening of the song. Then, for the third verse, you have the main melody
switching over to formerly silent acoustic guitar, while the banjo recedes
into the background, the bass reverts to minimalistic pinging, and the flute
reprises the circular waltzing (!). Finally, for the last verse it’s back to
banjo, with the flute and vibraphone saying their own subtle goodbyes as
well. And it’s all over in about two minutes. It would probably be a bit of a stretch to call this
a true masterpiece of creative arrangement, but the very fact that there is
so much going on shows that Songs Of
Our Heritage is not to be taken lightly. It may be so that people expect
Duane Eddy to show his virtuoso technique of playing acoustic guitar (and
banjo?), and leave disappointed when they find out he is not exactly Jimmy
Page; but that is a mistaken way of assessing the LP, which should instead be
held to the same type of standard as, say, Pet Sounds — a creative, wholesome product of musical
reinterpretation and arrangement. All of Duane’s classic records should, in
fact, be viewed as the product of collective
rather than individual work, but Songs Of Our Heritage most of all —
on here, the flute, the bass, the keyboards, and the string instruments are
all equi-important parts of a single whole, masterminded by the quietly
burgeoning genius of Mr. Hazlewood. I shall not go into comparable details on the other
songs, because Hazlewood’s formula of using banjo, acoustic guitar,
vibraphone, flute, and melodic bass remains more or less consistent
throughout, and he uses comparable tricks for most of these old chestnuts, be
they fast or slow, playful or melancholic, technically challenging or
minimalistic — but since there is enough mood variety between the tracks, the
record never becomes boring once you’ve figured out the key to appreciating
it. Extensive commentary on ‘Cripple Creek’ or ‘John Henry’ is simply not
required, because the basic melodies remain the same — this is indeed a
celebration of the heritage, not a deconstruction of it — but the way they
are treated is creative and fresh, and in some departments, unique; at the
very least, I would much rather listen to this for the rest of my life than
The Kingston Trio or The Weavers, thank you very much. The bottomline, though, is that Songs Of Our Heritage should rather be recommended for big fans
of Lee Hazlewood rather than those of Duane Eddy — regardless of the humble
liner notes by Lee and Lester Still, whose purpose almost seems to be to
dissipate certain doubts that fans could have about the nature of the record
("we have been asked many times...
‘what is Duane Eddy really like?’... this album will perhaps answer part of
the question... it shows the quiet... sometimes lonely... often beautiful...
and most certainly talented touch... of this young man"). The one
sentence from these notes that most definitely still holds true today the
same way it held true back in 1960 is "This is the ‘Duane’ that less than a dozen people know".
Here’s hoping that this review might go a little way toward rectifying this
undeserved situation — even if I would be the first to admit that even the
fully recognized prettiness and originality of these arrangements might not
be enough to elevate them to any sort of awesome-cathartic status. Note that the album has, in recent years, been
finally re-released several times on CD; some versions include a bunch of
alternate takes for some of the songs as bonus tracks, but there is also an
excellent European release that includes some of the 1960 singles instead
(e.g. ‘Kommotion’), and, most importantly, the hard-to-find single credited
to Duane Eddy And His Orchestra and containing two songs written by Hazlewood
for the poorly remembered and artistically insignificant (but socially relevant)
low budget movie Why Must I Die?.
Of these, ‘The Girl On Death Row’ is a particularly stunning highlight:
because it is officially credited to Duane Eddy, there is some misinformation
on the Web that it is a rare example of Eddy’s vocals, but, in fact, this is
the earliest example of a vocal part as sung by Lee Hazlewood in person (and
it quite expressly says so on top of the record itself!). Not only that, but
it is clearly an important milestone in the development of what might be
known as the «Gothic Western» style — Eddy’s brief twang in the intro and
outro is downright threatening, Lee’s vocals are deeply mournful, the strings
rise and fall in a deeply agitated manner, and the lyrics, reflecting the
plot of the movie, are quite a bit chilling ("her eyes were once so full of dreams / her young heart filled with
lover schemes / now every second she must borrow / they take her life
tomorrow"). Quite a symbolic career beginning for the father of
«cowboy psychedelia» — and a rather natural early predecessor for later moody
masterpieces such as ‘Some Velvet Morning’. |
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Album
released: 1961 |
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Tracks: 1) Brenda (Medley: I Want To Be
Wanted / That’s All You Gotta Do / I’m Sorry); 2) Sioux City Sue; 3) Tammy;
4) Big ’Liza; 5) Mary Ann; 6) Annette; 7) Tuesday; 8) Sweet Cindy; 9)
Patricia; 10) Mona Lisa; 11) Connie; 12) Carol. |
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REVIEW
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Before that, however, came the single most
disastrous event of Duane’s artistic career — the rift with Lee Hazlewood.
Details of the spat are hard to reconstruct, but apparently they fell out
over business matters when Duane was renewing his contract with Jamie
Records, and until the end of that contract and Eddy’s move to RCA, Lee would
no longer work with him. By 1963, they would have that patched up, but the
damage was done: in 1961, the world saw that, without Hazlewood’s songwriting
and arranging to ascend Eddy’s recordings to the next level, all that the
King of Twang really had to his name was... uhm, twang? Not that it was «nothing» or anything like that. The
first of Eddy’s A-sides for 1961, ‘Theme From Dixie’, was fast, fun, most
certainly twangy, and about as catchy as a version of ‘Dixie’ can ever be.
But it wasn’t particularly imaginative, except for a little trick where Jimmy
Troxel, the drummer, gradually increases the tempo, until the song fully
transitions from its bearded Civil War martial pattern to a danceable
country-rock beat. By contrast, the B-side was ‘Gidget Goes Hawaiian’, Eddy’s
contribution to the 1961 romantic beach comedy of the same name — as fluffy
as can be, a piece of harmless and quickly forgettable surf-twist that pretty
much sells out Duane Eddy to the corporate vision of teenage aesthetics
without offering anything exciting or unusual in return. The single was not a complete commercial loss, but
it fared worse than the preceding ‘Pepe’, and might have easily given the
impression that, without Hazlewood’s guidance, Eddy would soon degenerate
into a troubadour of generic Hollywood fluff; an impression that would only
be confirmed when his next single,
‘Ring Of Fire’, would turn out to be the theme for yet another long-forgotten
flick of the same name — nothing to do with the Johnny Cash song, but
actually a movie about the dangers of forest fires. Yes! Smokey Bear has
replaced Lee Hazlewood as our best friend now, and ‘Ring Of Fire’ matches our
furry friend’s inspirational potential bit-by-bit. Saxophones! Strings!
Choral harmonies! Twangy leads! We take everything that made ‘Theme From
Dixie’ so great, mix it in different proportions, and use it to help save
lives. Or just to destroy them with well-calculated boredom. Somewhere in the middle between these two singles, Eddy
and his band had time to put together enough material for a brand new LP,
whose central theme this time around would be the opposite sex, and whose
central message is that a twangy serenade is a much better gift than a
diamond ring. Actually, the concept of having each tune on your album bear a
different lady’s name was hardly new — Bill Haley, at the very least, had
done it two years earlier with Bill Haley’s
Chicks (and those songs at
least had vocals, so the names actually «meant» something!), and I’m sure
there must have been other examples as well. But thematic instrumental albums
were all the rage in 1961 (The Ventures released their first such LP, The Colorful Ventures, around the
same time, and from there on there was no going back), and without Hazlewood
to provide the originality of approach, I suppose Eddy just did the most
natural thing he could do. Do not be fooled by the horrendously low ratings Girls! Girls! Girls! get on RateYourMusic
or in other such places; they are more reflective of the overall forgotten
status and uninspiring nature of the record than its general technical or entertainment-related
aspects. As background dance music, it’s perfectly fine, and I am not even
offended by the gimmicky opening medley of several of Brenda Lee’s recent
hits — for that matter, the rollickin’ ‘That’s All You Gotta Do’ and the torchey ‘I’m Sorry’ are very
smoothly integrated into each other — although something tells me that taking
that photo with Brenda on the front sleeve was probably a more enjoyable
experience for young Mr. Duane than producing the actual recording. It’s just
that there is nothing unpredictable, surprising, or worth-writing-about in most
of these tracks. Close your eyes and remember ‘Mona Lisa’ as sung by Nat King
Cole; now try to erase the vocals in your head and replace them with a clean,
low-pitched, twangy recreation of the vocal melody. Add a few crooning
angelic backing vocals for good measure if your imagination allows you to. There,
you don’t need to hunt for the recording at all. A few points can be given for the relative diversity:
Eddy casts his net fairly wide, from the old-fashioned crooner ballad like ‘Mona
Lisa’ and ‘Tammy’ to syncopated R&B (Ray Charles’ ‘Mary Ann’) to Cuban
mambo (‘Patricia’) to yer olde Negro folk song (‘Big ’Liza’, rather arrogantly
re-christened from ‘Lil’ Liza Jane’ and credited to Duane himself — I don’t
know why he did it, but most likely out of conventional practice with all «traditional»
material at the time). This makes it a reasonably fun choice for an
old-fashioned dance party where you never know which upcoming style is going
to tax your feet even more in the next two minutes. But diversity is no big
help when it is not perfectly matched with creativity. At least five numbers are formally original, credited to either Duane solo or himself
in cooperation with Larry Knechtel; but they all follow formula. ‘Annette’ is
a slow tango with a rather corny violin part on top (not surprising, as it is
inspired by equally corny teen pop star Annette Funnicello, who is also seen
with Eddy on the front sleeve); ‘Tuesday’ is slow, echoey 12-bar blues,
surprisingly turning into piano-driven lounge jazz for the bridge section; ‘Sweet
Cindy’ seems to be a very slightly altered variation on ‘Oh Susannah’; ‘Connie’
is catchy, upbeat country-pop, most likely dedicated to Connie Francis (but I
cannot identify the actual music link, not being a major country connaisseur);
and ‘Carol’ is a slow Western waltz rather than (as you could probably hope) a
nod to Chuck Berry... wait, no, what am I saying? ‘Carol’ is actually a carol, because it pretty much steals away the
melody of ‘White Christmas’. In slow, waltzing, Western-ey fashion, that is. From an optimistic point of view, Girls! Girls! Girls! proves that Eddy
does not need Hazlewood in order to entertain his fanbase — which,
theoretically, he could do with this approach for years and years, since all
it requires is applying the Eddy / Hazlewood formula of twang guitar, yakety
sax, and angelic backing vocals to whatever material comes along, be it
country, blues, jazz, Latin dance, or Klingon acid punk. From a pessimistic
point of view, just repeat the entire preceding sentence slowly while banging
your head against the wall. The best news, as usual, is that the two points
of view supplement rather than contradict each other. As for myself, I
certainly had more fun listening to the record than trying to write about it —
also, it prompted me into refreshing those great Brenda Lee tunes in my mind,
so at least it’s motivating. To dispense with 1961 for good, the last two singles
Duane put out that year were a cover of ‘Caravan’ (with an unusually thin
guitar sound) and ‘The Avenger’, probably the single most genuinely «Eddy-esque»
recording of the year — with an actual overtone of grim badassery instead of
the «Hawaiian cowboy» vibes we’d been getting all through the year. But it
was too slow, too lumpy, too hookless for the general listener, and the
aggressive vibe of the main riff was not much help. Additionally, I’m not
sure which particular Avenger Eddy
is referring to: the iconic comic series would not be launched until 1963,
and although the slightly less iconic British spy-fi series did have its
first season in 1961, it is unlikely that Duane had the opportunity to catch
it over in the US that year. So either I’m missing out on yet another
obsolete pop culture reference, or the guy had a premonition that came
several years too early for commercial success, what with the single not even
making it into the Top #100. In short, 1961 was not really a good year for Duane Eddy
by any accounts — however, this is still far from the end of the relevant
part of the Duane Eddy story, even if, at the time, it might have very well
felt like the days of twang guitar as the focus of attention were numbered. |
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