Duane Eddy

New York born guitarist, Duane Eddy was the catalyst for the initial meeting of Lee Hazlewood and Lester Sill. Hazlewood (a disc jockey) met Duane Eddy while the duo Jimmy and Duane (Jimmy Delbridge, who later recorded as Jimmy Dell) performed at KCKY radio station in Phoenix. Lee Hazlewood, produced the duo's single, "Soda Fountain Girl", recorded and released in 1955, in Phoenix. Hazlewood then produced Sanford Clark's 1956 hit, "The Fool", featuring guitarist Al Casey. Meanwhile, Eddy and Delbridge performed and appeared on radio stations in Phoenix before joining Buddy Long's Western Melody Boys, playing country music in and around the city.

Concurrently in Hollywood, Lester Sill had rented office space to a man named John Garden, a friend to Hazlewood, who knew of his designs to start a publishing company supporting his new artist. Introductions were made and this was the genesis of Gregmark Music and a unique partnership between Lester and Hazlewood.

Circa 1957, Sill and Hazlewood recorded more songs with Sanford Clark in Phoenix. As they were cutting the instrumentals, Sill took notice of the young lead guitarist (Gretsch – Chet Atkins Model), Duane Eddy, of whom later said in retrospect... "He was a brilliant guitarist, but he had a haircut like a German U-Boat Commander, you know? He had the wrinkles in the back, and he was a big husky guy that looked like he could ram through a goddamn wall. And Lee and I were talking, I said, 'you know, he's a great musician', I said, 'but I don't know how you’re going to sell this guy, his face.' But this time I had gotten to know Dick Clark very well because of what I had been doing with Leiber and Stoller, and I said 'if we cut something, you know, we can send it to Dick, and we’ll know.' So, he pulled Duane [Eddy] out of the group, Duane was the rhythm guitar player, and he got Duane to get his big guitar. And they had a very interesting setup there. Our board, to make sure it wouldn't get dusty, was a cigar box. The knobs were cut out, that cigar box was cut out with the knobs, okay? The echo chamber was a water pipe, and when it rained we couldn't use it, or when a bird flew in there we couldn't use it, or when the garbage people came to collect garbage we couldn't use it. But the sound was incredible once we were able to use it. There it was— the sound was great. So anyway, we cut Duane. We cut him on four sides, and out of the four sides was a song called 'Movin’ and Groovin’ and '40 Miles of Bad Road,' and 'Rebel Rouser,' they were cut."

Lester contacted Dick Clark and set up a meeting for both he and Hazlewood. They met, played the tracks and showed Dick a picture of Duane Eddy. “We cut like 15 hits in a row with Duane. It was all over. And on a national set up, they used George Finfer — see, it went on the Jamie Records label," Dick Clark said.

wikipedia

Eddy devised a technique of playing lead on his guitar's bass strings to produce a low, reverberant "twangy" sound. In November 1957, Eddy recorded an instrumental, "Movin' n' Groovin'", co-written by Duane and Hazlewood. Lester said" In 1958, Duane signed a recording contract with Lester Sill and Lee Hazlewood to record in Phoenix at the Audio Recorders studio. Lester began managing Duane and licensed the tapes of all the singles and albums to the Philadelphia-based Jamie Records. Lester co-produced Duane's early recordings for Jamie as well.

"Movin' n' Groovin'" reached number 72 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1958; the opening riff, borrowed from Chuck Berry's "Brown Eyed Handsome Man," was itself copied a few years later by The Beach Boys on "Surfin' U.S.A.". For the follow-up, "Rebel 'Rouser", the record featured overdubbed saxophone by Los Angeles session musician Gil Bernal, and yells and handclaps by doo-wop group The Rivingtons. The tune became Eddy's breakthrough hit, reaching number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It sold over one million copies, earning Eddy his first gold disc.

Eddy had a succession of hit records over the next few years, and his band members, including Steve Douglas, saxophonist Jim Horn and keyboard player Larry Knechtel would go on to work as part of Phil Spector's Wrecking Crew. According to writer Richie Unterberger, "The singles – 'Peter Gunn', 'Cannonball', 'Shazam', and 'Forty Miles of Bad Road' were probably the best – also did their part to help keep the raunchy spirit of rock & roll alive, during a time in which it was in danger of being watered down." On January 9, 1959, Eddy's debut album, Have 'Twangy' Guitar Will Travel, was released, reaching number 5, and remaining on the album charts for 82 weeks. On his fourth album, 'Songs of Our Heritage' (1960), each track featured him playing acoustic guitar or banjo. Eddy's biggest hit at the time came with the theme to the movie Because They're Young in 1960, which featured a string arrangement, and reached a chart peak of number 4 in America and number 2 in the UK in September 1960. It became his second million selling disc. Eddy's records were equally successful in the UK, and in 1960, readers of the UK's NME voted him World's Number One Musical Personality, ousting Elvis Presley.

In 1960 Eddy signed a contract directly with Jamie Records. This caused a temporary rift between Eddy and Hazlewood. The result was that for the duration of his contract with Jamie, Eddy produced his own singles and albums.

--Wikipedia

Forrest GUMp

In July of 1994, the multiple Academy Award winning film Forrest Gump was released. Lester's son, Joel Sill, supervised the music soundtrack containing Duane's "Rebel Rouser." The soundtrack has sold over 8.4 million copies to date and peaked at #2 on Billboard's Hot 200. This culminated into a well deserved Duane Eddy revival.