Review: Duane Eddy - Twistin' 'N' Twangin' (1962)

Tracks: 1) The Peppermint Twist; 2) Twistin’ ’N’ Twangin’; 3) Let’s Twist Again; 4) Miss Twist; 5) Sugartime Twist; 6) Exactly Like You; 7) Walkin’ ’N’ Twistin’ (I’m Walkin’); 8) Dear Lady Twist; 9) Moanin’ 'N’ Twistin’; 10) Country Twist; 11) The Twist; 12) Twisting Off A Cliff.

REVIEW

Two good things happened to Duane Eddy at the end of 1961. First, he got married to the young and aspiring country / gospel singer Mirriam Jones, for whom he’d produced a couple of singles for Jamie Records in 1961; the marriage lasted for seven years (already a big improvement on Eddy’s first marriage to Carol Puckett, which lasted less than three), after which Mirriam Eddy went her own way, became a protegée of Waylon Jennings, adopted the name Jessi Colter and ended up as a moderately successful country star in her own right. Before that, however, she would actively contribute to her first husband’s career with occasional songwriting, backup vocals, and probably other elements of artistic guidance that were too personal for us to know.

The second thing is that he finally got to leave the aforementioned Jamie label — his personal small-time equivalent of Sun Records — and sign a contract with the much bigger RCA Victor (incidentally, following in the very steps of Elvis himself). The goodness of it, however, was not in that the move to a bigger label brought him more fortune or fame: the age of the dashing rockabilly guitarist was inevitably drawing to an end, and with Duane unable or unwilling to transition from the thing that he loved to something completely different, none of the promotion and distribution wizardry from RCA’s marketing department could help make that contract truly profitable. But the move to RCA did allow him, ultimately, to mend his relationship with Lee Hazlewood, strained after Eddy’s signing a new «solo» contract with Jamie, and by February 1962, the two were back together, with Lee helping reintroduce a bit of much-needed freshness and creativity into the Duane Eddy formula again, if only for a short while.

Unfortunately, even with this lucky turn of events Eddy’s very first LP for RCA had to comply with the ways of the world in 1962, which, in this case, meant a predictable nod to the Year Of The Twist. With The Ventures and pretty much any other surf-rock-type instrumental band at the time having already voluntarily embraced the yoke of Hank Ballard and Chubby Checker, Eddy had little choice but to follow suit. Duane Eddy as you’ve never heard him before! proudly announces the back side of the LP cover, failing, of course, to provide any explanation whatsoever as to exactly what they mean by that, because the record itself consists of a mix of oldies, contemporary covers, and original compositions over all of which Duane Eddy’s guitar rings and twangs precisely in the same way as we’d always heard it before. If there’s a bit of a change, it’s the «twisting» beat pattern that keeps recurring from song to song, but as we also know, there is really no single «twist beat» and many of these tunes are just your basic rock’n’roll with a relatively soft groove style — and that’s pretty much what Duane Eddy was all about from the very beginning.

Much like Girls! Girls! Girls!, then, all of this record is perfectly listenable, unquestionably enjoyable, and imminently forgettable once it’s off your turntable / playlist. But in all honesty, I couldn’t insist that Eddy isn’t even trying: on the contrary, he is doing his best to try and somehow «elevate» those simple twist numbers to something more meaningful than just providing a solid dance beat. Take the opening number, a fully instrumental re-working of the classic ‘Peppermint Twist’, the only remembered hit from Joey Dee and The Starliters, who wrote it as an homage to the Peppermint Lounge on 45th Street, often referred to as the very birthplace of the twist craze. As popular as the song was back in 1961, selling a million copies and everything, it is nothing but a lite-version rip-off of Gary U.S. Bonds’ ‘New Orleans’ with a bit of Isley Brothers’ ‘Shout!’ tacked on at the end — not to mention poor playing, poor vocals, poor production, and a general "I guess you had to be there" impression on the part of the modern listener.

Meanwhile, Eddy’s cover is tighter, grittier, and featuring top-level guitar playing for 1962: listen to him actually «twisting» those arpeggios at top speed during the instrumental break and you might feel he’s actually willing to breathe back some of the true rock’n’roll spirit into the diet-level «twist» version of it. The interplay between Barney Kessel’s choppy rhythm guitar, Eddy’s twangy lead guitar, Jim Horn’s sax, and Larry Knechtel’s organ sets me on fire much faster and much more assuredly than Joey Dee, even if the latter did sell a million copies, while Duane’s version was barely even noticed. I guess it’s all in the magic words — "well we’re going to a dance and it goes like this" is your open-sesame pass to gaining control over people’s minds, while "twang twang twang doo-da-dee dee diddy" doesn’t quite cut the mustard under the same circumstances, even if (or maybe precisely due to the fact that) its semantics is much more ambiguous. Anyway, give me Duane and The Wrecking Crew over Joey Dee any time: I can understand keep-it-simple-and-stupid when we’re talking Ramones, but Eddy’s band is not just more technically proficient — they’re actually kicking far more ass.

Of the other covers, I can hardly bring myself to recommending Eddy’s takes on ‘Let’s Twist Again’ and ‘The Twist’, but his take on Fats Domino’s ‘I’m Walkin’ (appropriately renamed ‘Walkin’ ’N’ Twistin’) is endearing, as he wittily tries to emulate the spirit of Fats with the twang guitar approach, and almost manages to carry over that sweet, lazy nonchalance we all love so much. ‘Dear Lady Twist’ — a direct cover of a recent Gary U.S. Bonds hit this time — also features stellar guitar and organ work, but it’s lamentable that they insist on including those backing vocals all the time, which gives you the illusion that they’re somehow bleeding over from the original recordings. Getting a fully instrumental cover with a super-serious "get up off your chair!" vocal refrain every once in a while just sounds silly.

Eddy’s own contributions begin with ‘Twistin’ ’N’ Twangin’, whose very title clearly refers to ‘Moovin’ ’N’ Groovin’ — and, indeed, the main riff is simply carried over from that classic, though overall it’s a highly divergent variation rather than a «twist-style self-cover»; a little too slow and repetitive for my tastes, though. For ‘Country Twist’, he briefly switches to acoustic guitar without doing anything particularly interesting on it; and the somewhat gruesomely titled ‘Twisting Off A Cliff’ ends the album on a weird note — it’s the most surf-rock song of them all, but with oddly arranged backing vocals and a stop-and-start dynamics that really gives the impression somebody just danced himself off the top of an actual cliff. Eddy’s little sarcastic joke flourish for a musical goodbye? I’m sure Hazlewood approved of this, or maybe it was his idea in the first place, the little trickster.

One track is credited to Mirriam Eddy: ‘Moanin’ ’N’ Twistin’, perhaps an instrumental take by Duane on one of her early country songs, though here it’s more of a mid-tempo blues-rock number showcasing Eddy’s power of sustain but little else. For some reason, Wikipedia lists it as a minor charting single, but I have not been able to find any single source that would confirm this (and it would be one heck of a strange choice for a single anyway). Instead, the actual single recorded during those sessions — but not included on the LP itself — was a «twistin’» cover of the oldie ‘Deep In The Heart Of Texas’, on which the sax somehow ended up being more prominent than the guitar. The B-side was Eddy’s own ‘Saints And Sinners’; I do not know if it was loosely based on anything original, but it is mildly notorious for being his first attempt at toying around with elements of the New Orleanian gospel sound, if you’re into that kind of stuff.

Overall, nobody who put out an entire album of twist-related content in 1962 — and just about everybody put out an entire album of twist-related content in 1962, with the notable exception of Elvis (isn’t The King at least obliged to retain some signs of dignity?) — anyway, nobody who put out an entire album of twist-related content in 1962 managed to walk away from the proceedings with an unsung masterpiece in their pocket, and Duane Eddy was no exception, because even the magic of Lee Hazlewood’s guidance and production cannot turn diet Coke into Ole Smokey Moonshine.

But, at the very least, this whole thing is a much, much better proposal than the Jamie Records LP Twistin’ With Duane Eddy, released in July 1962 and featuring songs with titles like ‘Rebel Rouser Twist’, ‘Cannonball Twist’, ‘Ramrod Twist’, etc. — I have never heard the actual album (just saw the cover to ascertain that it was, indeed, a real thing), but I strongly suspect that all of these tracks were just the original recordings (maybe with additional overdubs, but probably just the way they were) with the word "twist" attached to the original titles, which definitely makes the LP a strong candidate for the «record industry scam of 1962» prize. It also goes to show how little real meaning the word «twist» actually possessed around the time; you could easily re-release old classics with new titles like ‘The Long Tall Sally Twist’ or ‘The Hound Dog Twist’ and everybody would eat it up. And hey, it would at least be preferable to re-recording these songs in the style of Chubby Checker, the original «poptimist» if there ever was one.

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