Review: Duane Eddy - The "Twangs" The "Thang" (1959)
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.
REVIEW
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.
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.