Eddy Duchin was the matinee-idol pianist of Depression-era café society, leading his orchestra from the keyboard at Manhattan's Central Park Casino with a trademark flourish: the melody played low, in the piano's dark bottom octaves, where it purred instead of sparkled. A celebrity bandleader of his day, he died of leukemia at 41 — but that low-register trick took a strange second life when Lee Hazlewood borrowed it for the twanging guitar sound of early rock and roll.

the sound in question

1938

Ol' Man MoseEddy Duchin