The Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame and its museum is located in Cleveland, Ohio, USA.  

The Duane Eddy display at the Rock'n' Roll Hall of Fame:

The R&R Hall of Fame started in 1986. 

Duane Eddy was inducted in 1994, the 9th year.  

This is the cover that year.   Page 18 had an article for Duane by Michael Hill.

Mick Jones of Foreigner ended up presenting Duane because John Fogerty could not attend due to the recent earthquake in Los Angeles.  Eddy was the lead guitarist on Foreigner's 1995 hit "Until the End of Time", which reached the top ten on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart.  

Press for Duane's induction included local articles in the Star-Gazette (front page and Time Out).  Stories also ran nationally.  January 20, 1994

Read the text of the Time Out article by Dan Aloi  Ain't Nothing but a 'twang'

Star Gazette

Time Out

By Dan Aloi

"Ain't Nothing but a 'twang'

Since not long after he left Penn Yan for Arizona at age 13, Duane Eddy has influenced countless musicians and worked with some of the rock era's great talents.

"Ritchie Valens and Eddie Cochran and I used to go out together and look for Mexican restaurants in New York City, which there weren't many good ones at that time," Eddy, 55, said from his home in Nashville last week.  

The guitarist also got to know Buddy Holly on a 1958 tour.  The two would meet "backstage and we swapped guitars.  He'd play my Gretsch and I'd play his Fender.  We were all teen-agers or in our early 20's, and spent a lot of time just talking.  It was fun.  And I got to know him very well."

Eddy also has maintained a long association from those early days with Holly's friends Sonny Curtis and the Everly Brothers.  And more recently, he's collaborated with John Fogerty, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Ry Cooder and James Burton.  

Eddy started playing for pay as a sideman in a country band when he was 15.  Four years later, after appearing on local television and radio, he cut his first record with Lee Hazelwood [Hazlewood], one of the first independent rock producers, in a studio with "three tracks and a water tank for echo."

"We cut the record in Phoenix, and sent it to Jamie Records (in Philadelphia) and they liked it," Eddy said.  "That was 'Movin'and Grovin'."  "It got into the national charts at No. 72 with an anchor --instead of a bullet--and stayed there a couple of weeks.  It did about 100,000 in sales. " 

"I think, in retrospect, they thought something was wrong with the record because of all that bending of the strings I was doing," Eddy said.  "They pulled it because they thought they had a bad pressing. It might've done better, but by that time I had 'Rebel Rouser' ready."

That song, boosted by Dick Clark and his "Bandstand" show, went from an obscure B-side to a nationwide hit, peaking at No. 6.  It featured a rave-up finish with saxophone, bass, piano, drums, rebel yells and handclaps, all propelled by a simple melody played by Eddy in the "twang" style he had been developing.  

It was that sound that set Eddy apart from other guitar players in 1958, making him the rock era's first guitar hero at age 19.  

"Rebel Rouser" was only first of more than two dozen instrumental hits Eddy would score over the next five years.  It's "my career song, as they say, the first one that really broke through," he said.  "I also like "40 miles of Bad Road" for various reasons and 'Peter Gunn' for various reasons."

"And 'Because They're Young.'  It was kind of a breakthrough because it was the orchestra and me co-starring on it.  Shelly Mann, the drummer, he's a West Coast jazz king, and Barney Kessel are on it, too."

"And James Darrin had a vocal hit with it.  Dick Clark had a movie that he starred in, kind of a mild 'Blackboard Jungle.'  I actually performed 'Shazam' at the school dance in it."

"Because They're Young" went to No. 4 and is included along with 39 other twangin' instrumentals on "Twang Thang: The Duane Eddy Anthology" (Rhino)  Eddy had a hand in remastering and compiling the retrospective, which was released last year.  

"We did it more from a guitar player's standpoint rather than all the big hits," he said.  "I felt good that they let me talk'em into remastering the album-...With some of those tapes, they'd laid around so long, they had dropouts that we had to put it back in in the computer.  One song had a whole note missing, so we had to lift it out from some other point later in the song and drop it in.  Basically we took everything we needed and we clarified it better."

Eddy has continued to record instrumental albums (the last was in 1987, on Capitol) and he tours with the Everlys---but he'll always be remembered for his early hits, and the simple approach that would help launch a thousand budding musicians, who started by playing along to "Rebel Rouser."

"I can that, because you can pick up a guitar and play it, and get so you can, "Well, maybe I can do this,' and go on with it," Eddy said.  "Not just guitar players, but bass players and sax players have listened and it gave them a starting place."

"Most guitar players I've met" have made it a point to tell Eddy about this, even ones he didn't expect to hear from. "I've had guys who were great jazz players say they started playing to my records."  Fogerty and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page are a couple of notable examples, and future Beatle Harrison was inspired to call his first band The Rebel Rousers.  

"It doesn't matter who, amateurs to professionals, there's been so many," Eddy said.  "The fact that they say I started them, I can be very happy with that ---certainly taking the place of all the money I should have made in those days."

Fun Fact:

One of the traditions associated with the yearly event is the illustration of the class of inductees by Chris Morris.  

It is easy to recognize Duane by his Gretsch guitar in front of the piano with Elton John.  

To learn more about Chris and the Rock illustrations, explore this link... 

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