Girls! Girls! Girls!

Duane Eddy's 1961 release Girls! Girls! Girls! was something of a concept album, but you might not have guessed if you hadn't read the song titles first. All 12 tunes are named after women, though the opening cut, "Brenda," stretches this a bit, since it's actually a medley of three numbers that had been hits for Brenda Lee (who posed with Eddy for one of the cover photos, as did fellow honoree Annette Funicello). Girls! Girls! Girls! was fairly typical of Eddy's albums of the period, as it tended to focus on pop songs and standards rather than the tougher, twangy numbers that earned Eddy his first string of hits, but there's no arguing that he was as good as ever at what he did. Eddy's single-note leads and subtle, well-modulated use of the whammy bar are uniformly impressive, and among the originals penned by Duane, "Tuesday" sounds nearly as provocative as the gal who inspired it (Tuesday Weld), while "Connie" is just as fresh and likable as Ms. Stevens. The accompaniment is spare a