Duane Eddy and Gretsch Guitars

Did you ever get a tune stuck in your head for no reason at all? This happened to me over the weekend and fortunately, it was an instrumental by legendary guitarist Duane Eddy so I didn't care. Eddy, as many of you know, was famous for his twangy Gretsch Guitar sound. The thing that bugged me, however, was that for the life of me, I could not remember the name of said tune.

I have about 100 or so 45 RPM records in my collection (down from about 600 or so--it was becoming a storage problem) so I went through them and --Eureka!--I found it. It was a song called The Lonely One released in 1959 on Jamie Records. (The flip side is a song called Detour, which I like but not as much). Growing up, Duane Eddy was played in my house a lot so I grew to love his stuff. So glad that I still have this record.

I wanted to download it to my iPod but, alas, iTunes does not have this particular Eddy song in its catalog as of yet. I plan to email them to see if they can add it.

I've always been attracted to songs with great-sounding guitars, no matter what the genre. Some others come to mind: the diabolical-sounding guitar on many of the Dead Kennedy's songs; Steve Cropper's snarky guitar on Green Onions; almost ANYTHING with a steel guitar; a song by the band Ween called Buenos Tarde, Amigo ...always sends chills up my spine.

I'm gonna try to make this my next research project: a list of my 10 best guitarists (and songs).