Twangy twang-twang

Continuing my trip back through the 1961 album charts.

09/07/61 : $1,000,000.00 Worth Of Twang - Duane Eddy 

Quite ridiculously, I'm skipping over yet another Sinatra compilation album to take us to the only album in the chart this week that I haven't met or ignored - I'm aware of Duane Eddy from his use by The Art Of Noise and 2ManyDJs, but I can't say I'm expecting to find a whole album of him particularly interesting.

Oh no - not only is it not particularly interesting, it's actively annoying.  I'll just take $10.00 worth of twang please Duane.  I can appreciate the skill involved and I can believe it was a fresh new sound at the time, but it's not for me.  It's a very odd album title as well - why did he feel the need to include the cents?

We're all the way down at #19 in the charts this week on his fifteenth week of an eighteen week run, with it having peaked at #5 in his eighth week.  The top five this week were South Pacific, Elvis, George, TSOM and Cliff and we have one new entry in the chart which is the aforementioned Sinatra best-of (#18) and this was the only week it spent in the chart, so even the 1961 audience felt that possibly they were being fed too much Frank.

Wikipedia does have an entry on the album but there's remarkably little content - it's a best-of and the critics liked it considerably more than I did.  Duane's entry is lengthier but basically just tells us how influential he was and he kept on twanging for many a year, playing Glastonbury in 2011 and touring to celebrate his 80th birthday in 2018.  Until last month, in news that completely passed me by, when he died of cancer - RIP Duane.  His album titles really loved that twang though, including Have Twangy Guitar Will Travel, The Twangs The Thang, Twangin' Up A Storm, Twangsville and The Greatest Twang Of All!

"Customers also listened to" "no similar recommendations" - which doesn't overly surprise me because it's certainly a pretty unique sound.  And not a sound that I go for, I'm afraid but I do appreciate the skill involved.

02/07/61 - The year just gets weirder
16/07/61 - Fine, but nothing to stand out

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