'Echo and Twang': Plug Into Classic Guitar Music of the 1950s

Features
By published

Echo and Twang (192 pages, $19.95), a book edited by guitar expert Tony Bacon, plugs you into a decade in popular music and pop culture that simply could not have happened without the electric guitar.

Year by year, you'll discover the guitars, players (Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Barney Kessel and more) and developments that impacted jazz, blues and country, and gave birth to a timeless movement called rock 'n' roll.

In stunning full-color throughout, it also features classic ads, catalogs, movie posters and other fascinating '50s memorabilia. Includes an index and a bibliography.

The book is available now at the Guitar World Online Store!

Guitar World Staff
Guitar World Staff

Since 1980, Guitar World has been the ultimate resource for guitarists. Whether you want to learn the techniques employed by your guitar heroes, read about their latest projects or simply need to know which guitar is the right one to buy, Guitar World is the place to look.

More about books

Industry expert and YouTuber Adam Saunders launches new books to break down the barriers of music theory to make songwriting simple

“He scoured the globe to find these guitars. I had given many away or sold them through the years, but he tracked them down”: A 1,000-page book showcasing Steve Vai’s iconic guitars has been announced – and it will be joined by a super-limited Ibanez JEM

Only one day left to save! Guitar Center’s massive Guitar-A-Thon sale is nearly over, but there's still time to score $600 off a Gibson Les Paul, as well as hundreds of Fender, Martin and more
See more latest
Most Popular
Toshi Dorji plays live and is silhouetted against a deep red background.
“I’ve been to guitar shops and played fancy guitars and cheaper ones. I just don’t understand why people pay so much money”: Tashi Dorji explains why he sees little value in expensive instruments – but views improv guitar as anarchy
Adam "Nolly" Getgood Poses with his custom T-styles: his new collaboration with Bare Knuckle brings us a PAF-alike with more output, designed for the player of today's tone preferences.
“Anyone can dial in a really fat, thick, saturated guitar tone for single notes, but what happens when they palm-mute? Does it just fall apart? A lot of the time it does”: Adam ‘Nolly’ Getgood busts myths about how to get great high-gain tone
Connor Wyatt and his dog standing in front of the music store GAK
“There are people out there that had paid £2,000 for a guitar…and we were still getting emails from people saying, ‘Where’s my stuff?’”: What happens when a guitar store goes bust? A former employee at one of the UK's biggest guitar stores tells all
English rock group The Kinks, from left, Ray Davies, Pete Quaife, Mick Avory and Dave Davies (playing a Vox Phantom XII 12 string guitar) perform on the pop music television show Thank Your Lucky Stars for ABC Television at Alpha Television Studios in Birmingham, England in 1965. The band members are all wearing matching red jackets and pink shirts.
“I left without a penny to my name. I was bitter for a while, but I’ve got a great legacy”: Though Pete Quaife gets credit for jumpstarting the Kinks bass chair, John Dalton and Jim Rodford pushed the band forward on many of their classic albums
Clarence Gatemouth Brown performs at the Santa Cruz Blues Festival at Aptos Village Park in Aptos, California on May 27, 2000
“Chuck Berry's not a very good guitar player. He's a clown. He runs all over the guitar, just like any one of these old rock players would do, and makes no sense”: Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown pulled no punches when speaking about his fellow guitar heroes
Roy Clark (left) and Merle Travis
“I said, ‘Merle, do you remember this?’ and I played him his song Sweet Bunch of Daisies. He said, ‘I remember it. I've never heard it played that good’”: When Roy Clark met his guitar hero
Bassist Hadrien Feraud
“I asked Marcus to sing on it. As amazing as he is on bass, I think he’s underrated as a vocalist”: Having earned lofty status in bass-hero circles, Marcus Miller lent his vocal chops to Hadrien Feraud’s solo album
Bootsy Collins
“I was playing stuff I don’t think James Brown understood. He told me, ‘You have to play the one – you’re playing too much’”: Six years after he quit touring, Bootsy Collins reflects on James Brown and George Clinton, and what he gets out of playing today
Geordie Walker of Killing Joke performs with his Gibson gold-top Gibson ES-295 with the Mary Kaye pickguard.
“This guy kept calling saying, ‘I’ve never been in a band before, but I’m the best guitarist ever.’ When I heard him play it was like a fire from heaven”: The life and times of Killing Joke visionary Geordie Walker – the guitar hero’s guitar hero
Bad Cat's late amp designer Mark Sampson on the shop floor: Sampson is widely credited as being one of the godfather's of the boutique amp movement.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that Mark Sampson was the father of the boutique amp revolution”: An interview with the late, great Mark Sampson, the trailblazing amp designer behind Bad Cat and Matchless