Duane Eddy dies at 86: remembering the Grammy winner’s signature sound and influence on Bruce Springsteen

Grammy-award-winning guitarist Duane Eddy, known for his “unmistakable” signature “twang” sound, has died at the age of 86 on May 1 2024. The musician died surrounded by family near his home in Franklin, Tennessee after a battle with cancer, his wife Deed Abbate informed the Associated Press.

Eddy’s distinctive style became an influence to a number of future rock ‘n’ roll musicians, including The Beatles’ George Harrison and Bruce Springsteen, with the underlying principle that low-end guitar sounds sounded much better than high-end guitar sounds when recording to tape - a time long before digital workstations were a thing of the future.

“Duane inspired a generation of guitarists the world over with his unmistakable signature ‘Twang’ sound,” a representative said in a statement. “He was the first rock and roll guitar god, a truly humble and incredible human being. He will be sorely missed.”

With a slew of hits in the 1950s and 1960s, Eddy earned 16 top 40 singles between the years of 1958 and 1963, the purple patch in his career where many considered him “the” rock’n’roll guitar virtuoso of his day. He went on to record over 50 albums during his lifetime, including reissues, the vast majority before his retirement in the mid-1980s. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

Duane Eddy’s influence and legacy

Eddy was born on April 26th in Corning, New York. He started playing the guitar when he was five years old. As a child, he performed in local radio shows and was primarily influenced by the guitar styles of singing cowboys like Roy Rodgers and Gene Autry, as well as musicians such as Les Paul, Chet Atkins, and Merle Travis.

At the age of 13, Eddy moved to Arizona where he teamed up with a friend named Jimmy Delbridge to perform in local shows. They were discovered by an aspiring producer named Lee Hazlewood, who went on to record Eddy's first solo single, Movin' n' Groovin', in 1957 when Eddy was 19. Hazlewood and Eddy developed a unique "twang" style which Hazlewood later adapted for Nancy Sinatra's hit song These Boots Are Made for Walkin' in 1965.

Although Duane Eddy's popularity decreased during the British invasion in the mid-1960s, his music style had a profound impact on emerging musicians such as George Harrison and Hank Marvin of the Shadows. Despite this, his music continued to be heard in more than 30 movies and TV shows over the years. In 1986, he made a comeback to the charts with a remake of his 1960 song Peter Gunn, performed by the UK band the Art of Noise.

Kyle Young, chief executive of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, in a statement to Variety, hailed the innovation that Eddy brought during that era of music: “Instrumentalists don’t usually become famous. But Duane Eddy’s electric guitar was a voice all its own,” said 

“His sound was muscular and masculine, twangy and tough. Duane scored more than 30 hits on the pop charts. But more importantly, his style inspired thousands of hillbilly cats and downtown rockers – the Ventures, George Harrison, Steve Earle, Bruce Springsteen, Marty Stuart, to name a few – to learn how to rumble and move people to their core”. 

“The Duane Eddy sound will forever be stitched into the fabric of country and rock & roll.”