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.
REVIEW
Well... this ain’t exactly a tale of long legs and burgundy lips, dancing down on Sunset Strip, though I’m sure a healthy, red-blooded all-American guy like Duane Eddy would not be completely alien to the values espoused by his long-haired hedonistic successors in the mid-Eighties. It does seem less of a coincidence that this LP was released at around the same time that The Coasters put out their own ‘Girls! Girls! Girls!’, written for them by their usual patrons Leiber and Stoller and later turned into the theme song for an Elvis movie in 1962. Maybe it was that single which provided the inspiration for Eddy’s follow-up «concept» album: now that he’d dealt with the American heritage of yesterday, it was time to pay one big collective tribute to the ladies of today, both real and imaginary.
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.
Only Solitaire reviews: Duane Eddy
This album is scrapping the bottom of the chamber bucket for entertainment and should be listed as pulling nose-hairs for fun music at a dance party. I don't know what the recreational drug was or what alcohol was consumed in 1961 (I was only 4 years old at the time) but it wasn't strong enough if this was the norm. Glad I was spared being a teen then.