Country Style! Duane "Twangs the Thang" Eddy Edition

David with another look at a pop-rock-soul-etc. act who released a country album.

[In case you missed the “Country Style” series debut… I wrote just a little bit about what I mean by the category in the first installment of this occasional series, whenI looked at Steve Lawrence’s Swinging West and Eydie Gorme’s Gorme Country Style.]

Duane Eddy – “Twang” a Country Song, 1963

Duane Eddy died late last month at age 86. Like you, I already knew he was one of the most influential and revered guitarists in the history of rock and roll, but in the wake of his passing, I was glad to see people reminding us. In his recent obit for the guitarist, Stephen Thomas Erlewine noted that the “twang” Eddy got from his instrument “was every bit as distinctive and memorable as Elvis Presley's pleading or Buddy Holly's hiccups.” In The New York Times, Bill Friskics-Warren observed that Eddy’s play influenced “George Harrison, Jimi Hendrix and Bruce Springsteen, whose plunging guitar lines on ‘Born to Run’ pay homage to Mr. Eddy’s muscular fretwork.” Those takes and others reminded me of something the guitarist and guitar-scholar Deke Dickerson once said: If rock guitar had a Mount Rushmore, Duane Eddy would be its George Washington.

Eddy is always talked about this way, like he’s an epitome of the rock-and-roll electric guitarist—and no argument here. But I do think his career, style, and repertoire were at the same time very country, straight along. Perhaps that’s why, when I learned Eddy had died, the first record I pulled out was his “Twang” a Country Song, from 1963. His contribution to the “Country Style!” frenzy that followed Ray Charles’ breakout Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, it has long been my favorite of Eddy’s albums, give or take a greatest-hits collection, I guess. Now, technically speaking, Twang” a Country Song isn’t rock and roll, but I like it. Then again, listening through his albums these last few weeks reinforced to me that country music, rock and roll, and Duane Eddy’s “twang” are all tightly intersecting sets.

That “twang” was Eddy’s tonal calling card. He liked to play the melody mostly straight, rather than play with or around it. His tone, thrillingly present, dominated his records but also seemed somehow apart from them. He played every note with humble, conversational deliberation and, typically, he generously spotlighted his sidemen for the solos.

For “Twang” a Country Song, produced by Eddy’s longtime collaborator Lee Hazelwood, those sidemen were all Nashville A-Teamers: Bob Moore and Buddy Harman on bass and drums, Harold Bradley adding the tic tac, Ray Edenton playing rhythm guitar, Buddy Emmons on pedal steel and (on a country-pop reading of “Wildwood Flower”) Tommy Jackson on fiddle, with Floyd Cramer and Pig Robbins taking turns behind the piano and with backing vocals from the Anita Kerr Singers, here and there joined by the Jordanaires. This lineup’s wordless rendering of “Please Help Me I’m Falling,” with Eddy picking out the tune one fat, twangy note at a time (No “Carter Scratch” here), and with Cramer and Emmons doing the easy-listening heavy lifting, is about as perfect a presentation of the Nashville Sound as you could imagine.

You could say the same for each track here. It’s country standards all the way, mostly obvious-but-welcome picks like “Precious Memories” and “Peace in the Valley,” “Satisfied Mind” and Crazy Arms,” but including also more unexpected choices such as “Making Believe” and a seething “Window Up Above.” One of my favorite cuts here, a rip-roaring version of “Fireball Mail” (link below), features brief, bouncy turns from Pig and Buddy. Notably, and like the entire album, it’s pretty much of a piece with everything else in the Eddy catalog. Go ahead and add it as a bonus track to, say, his dance-rock album, Dance with the Guitar Man, also cut with the A-Team a year earlier, and then just keep dancing away with the Guitar Man.

“Twang” a Country Song branded itself as something apart from the rest of Eddy’s rock-&-roll catalog, but the truth is that you could fairly describe almost any Eddy album as “country,” to some degree or other. This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Already a fan of country music before he moved with his family to Arizona from New York as a teen, young Duane cited Chet Atkins and Merle Travis as his early heroes. And that “Twang,” what he eventually dubbed his own echoey, whammy-barred style and sound, shouted his country & western affinities years before he ever determined to “twang” an entire album of the genre’s songs.

Even the title of his breakout smash, “Rebel Rouser,” tied him to country music or, more precisely, to the white South with which the genre is most associated. A No. 6 pop hit in 1958, Eddy’ signature song was originally called “Rabble Rouser” until Lee Hazelwood, who shared the writer’s credit with Eddy and produced the guitarist’s earliest releases, suggested that “Rebel Rouser” would be better. A clever and amusing pun, sure, but also one that was disturbingly savvy, commercially speaking, particularly in the late ‘50s. As the civil rights movement faced rebel-flag-waving counter protests in the South, and as the nation geared up to commemorate the centennial of the Civil War, it wouldn’t hurt to have a song title that evoked, at least for some listeners, a different sort of rebel than the one the Crystals would soon be singing about. (That same year, for the B-side to “Cannonball,” Eddy and Hazelwood Civil War-punned a second time—on “Mason Dixon Lion.”)

“Rebel Rouser,” in addition to being a major pop hit, went Top 20 country—hardly an unusual border-crossing for that era. Eddy had to wait twenty years for his only other country chart appearance, a version of “You Are My Sunshine,” that climbed only as high as No. 69—even with superstar vocal guests Waylon and Willie along for the ride, along with Deed Abate, Duane’s third wife. (Fun fact: In 1968, Jennings’ wife Jessi Colter, nee Mirriam Johnson, divorced her first husband… Duane Eddy!)  

His lack of country radio success aside, Eddy cut country songs on the regular. Have Twangy Guitar, Will Travel, his 1958 TV-western alluding debut, included an innervating run through Slim Willett’s (or if you prefer Spade Cooley’s, or Patti Page’s) “Detour” as well as a jazzy little run through the Eddy Arnold hit “Anytime.” From there, across his golden years on Jamie Records and RCA, Eddy covered the country standards “Do Not Forsake Me,” “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “Cripple Creek,” “The Prisoner’s Song,” “Sioux City Sue,” “Last Date,” and, for 1960’s The “Twangs” the Thang,” his first go at “You Are My Sunshine.” All that before we even get to plays-nice-with-country numbers like “I Almost Lost My Mind,” “Trouble in Mind,” “Moon River,” and a version of the Hazelwood-written Dean Martin hit, “Houston.” Also in the neighborhood, Songs of Our Heritage, an acoustic, banjo-friendly set from 1960, was Eddy’s contribution to the folk revival.

Each of these albums, sonically speaking, possesses a bit of an easy-listening vibe, not at all a criticism from my way of thinking. His albums—Twang” a Country Song as much as any of them—thread the needle of that era’s pop-and-country aesthetic. They’re mid-century perfect for spinning on that new Hi-Fi in the den, with Eddy’s long players stored between modern-country-sounding platters from Ray Charles or Patsy Cline and sliding in just ahead maybe of the latest exotica release from Esquivel.

My favorite cut on the album, a version of Hank Williams’s “Weary Blues (from Waiting),” would fit well within just such a stack of records. Emmons has the solo, his pedal steel twinkling like starlight, and the Anita Kerr Singers get the choruses, their harmonies dreamy and surreal. As always, Eddy “twangs” the dark melody carefully, walking alone and sounding very blue.

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