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Duane Eddy performs at the Stagecoach Music Festival in Indio, California on April 27, 2014. Eddy, a pioneering guitar hero who introduced the instrument's reverberant electric sounds on the likes of “Rebel Rouser” and “Peter Gunn,” helped create an early thumping sound. He died on Tuesday at the age of 86, the life of rock and roll.
Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP
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Duane Eddy performs at the Stagecoach Music Festival in Indio, California on April 27, 2014. Eddy, a pioneering guitar hero who introduced the instrument's reverberant electric sounds on the likes of “Rebel Rouser” and “Peter Gunn,” helped create an early thumping sound. He died on Tuesday at the age of 86, the life of rock and roll.
Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP
NEW YORK — Pioneering guitar hero Duane Eddy, who helped introduce the instrument's resonant electric sound to early rock and roll, influencing the likes of “Rebel Rouser” and “Peter Gunn” and influenced George Harrison, Bruce Springsteen and countless other musicians; Died at the age of 86.
Eddie died of cancer Tuesday at Williamson Hospital in Franklin, Tennessee, according to his wife, Deed Abbate.
With raucous rhythms, backing sounds, and hand claps, Eddy has sold more than 100 million records worldwide and mastered a unique sound based on the premise that a guitar's bass strings sound better on tape than its treble strings.
“I had a unique sound that people recognized, and I pretty much stuck to it. I'm not one of the best technical players by any means. I'm just the one that sells the best,” he told The Associated Press in a 1986 interview. said. “A lot of people play guitar better than me. A lot of it is in my head. But some of it is not what I want to hear on the guitar.”
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“Twang” defined Eddy’s sound from his first album, “Have Twangy Guitar Will Travel,” to his 1993 box set, “Twang Thang: The Duane Eddy Anthology.”
“It’s a stupid name for a stupid thing,” Eddy told The Associated Press in a 1993 interview. “But it's been haunting me for 35 years, so it's almost like it has sentimental value. There's nothing else.”
He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
Eddy and producer Lee Hazlewood helped create the “Twang” sound in the 1950s, a sound that Hazlewood later applied in the production of Nancy Sinatra's 1960s hit “These Boots Are Made for Walkin'.” Eddy enjoyed a five-year commercial peak beginning in 1958. 63. He said in 1993 that he took his 1970 hit “Freight Train” as his cue to slow down.
“It was an easy-listening hit,” he recalled. “Six or seven years ago, I was on the cutting edge.”
Eddy recorded more than 50 albums, some of which have been reissued. He said in 1986 that he had not worked much since the 1980s and was “living off my royalties.”
He said of 'Rebel Rouser' in an interview with the Associated Press, “It was a good title and it had the most rock and roll sound. It was different at the time.”
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He composed theme songs for movies including “Because They're Young,” “Pepe,” and “Gidget Goes Hawaiian.” But Eddie said he rejected the James Bond theme song because it didn't have enough guitar music.
During the 1970s, he worked behind the scenes in music production operations, primarily in Los Angeles.
Eddy was born in Corning, New York and raised in Phoenix, where he began playing guitar at age five. He spent his teenage years in Arizona dreaming of singing on the Grand Ole Opry, and eventually signed with Philadelphia's Jamie Records in 1958. . “Rebel Rouser” soon followed.
Eddy later toured with Dick Clark's “Caravan of Stars” and appeared in films including “Because They're Young” and “Thunder of Drums.”
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He moved to Nashville in 1985 after several years of semi-retirement in Lake Tahoe, California.
Eddy was not a vocalist, saying in 1986, “One of my greatest contributions to the music business is not singing.”
Paul McCartney and George Harrison were both fans of Eddy and had recorded with the pair since their Beatles days. He played on McCartney's “Rockestra Theme” in 1987, and Harrison played on Eddy's self-titled comeback album.