Music for Grownups: Dick Dale's Surfin' Safari
The life and times of the king of surf-guitar.
By: Richard Gehr | Source: AARP.org | Date Posted: 2008-05-29
Richard Gehr is a veteran music critic based in New York City.
Although the exact date appears in only one book I've seen, Dick Dale is said to have invented the surf-guitar sound the first time he performed "Let's Go Trippin'," on May 31, 1958, in Newport Beach, Calif.
And if Dale didn't do it that particular day (and he probably didn't), it wasn't long afterward that his cranked-up staccato guitar lines were inspiring a generation of surf bands. These included the Beach Boys, the Surfaris, the Chantays, Jan & Dean, the Belaires, the Trashmen, the Atlantics, the Ventures, the Pyramids, the Eliminators, the Tornadoes, the Rip Chords, the Routers, and the Fantastic Baggys—among others.
Dick Dale was born Richard Monsour in 1937 to a Polish mother and a Lebanese father. He bought his first guitar in order to sound like Hank Williams. After moving from Massachusetts to Southern California in 1954, Dale cut his teeth playing country music and rockabilly (which he claims to have invented). Leo Fender, whom he met in a folk club, asked Dale to help him break in his company's new Stratocaster guitar, which Dale, a left-hander, played upside-down.
By the end of the '50s, Dale and his Del-Tones were playing to thousands of surfers and gremmies—surf slang for “fans and imitators of surfing legends”—at the Rendezvous Ballroom, in Balboa, Calif. There, he started ripping through a series of increasingly large speakers that he would regularly blow out.
One of the cool things about Dick Dale was that he actually surfed. Another is that his music blends the Middle Eastern sound of the oud, the lute his uncle played to accompany belly dancers in Massachusetts, with the driving rhythms of big-band drummer Gene Krupa.
Dale's signature tune, "Misirlou," is actually a traditional Greek song adopted by the big bands he loved. Dale revived the tune, it is said, when asked if he could play an entire song on a single guitar string. He opted to play it ridiculously fast and released it as a single in 1962. (Watch an amazing clip of Dale and the Del- Tones performing the song in the otherwise unmemorable 1963 movie "A Swingin' Affair" here.) Many other notable surf bands also recorded "Misirlou," which director Quentin Tarantino juiced up once again when he made it an integral part of the "Pulp Fiction" soundtrack in 1994.
Although the reverb-guitar sound and surf rock eventually became inseparable, Dale recorded his debut album, 1961's "Surfer's Choice," without any reverb whatsoever, adding it only later to augment his admittedly weak voice. And while the best surf rock evokes crashing waves and a ragged sort of teenage energy, Dale once described his personal style to an interviewer thusly: "When I play, it's like I'm fighting you. I make faces when I pull the strings, because it's pain, not showbiz. It's like working out!"
While many other acts profited nicely from the sound he pioneered, Dale was not among them. He quit the business in 1965, when he was diagnosed with cancer. However, he made a comeback in 1987 with "Back to the Beach," which starred Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, in whose movies he had appeared during the early '60s. His 1993 album, "Tribal Thunder" is a weird and marvelous mixture of surf guitar, heavy metal, and Native Americanisms.
An outspoken eccentric, the king of surf guitar is currently recovering from an April 2008 operation and subsequent chemotherapy. Let's wish him well on the semicentennial of surf rock's invention.
And if Dale didn't do it that particular day (and he probably didn't), it wasn't long afterward that his cranked-up staccato guitar lines were inspiring a generation of surf bands. These included the Beach Boys, the Surfaris, the Chantays, Jan & Dean, the Belaires, the Trashmen, the Atlantics, the Ventures, the Pyramids, the Eliminators, the Tornadoes, the Rip Chords, the Routers, and the Fantastic Baggys—among others.
Dick Dale was born Richard Monsour in 1937 to a Polish mother and a Lebanese father. He bought his first guitar in order to sound like Hank Williams. After moving from Massachusetts to Southern California in 1954, Dale cut his teeth playing country music and rockabilly (which he claims to have invented). Leo Fender, whom he met in a folk club, asked Dale to help him break in his company's new Stratocaster guitar, which Dale, a left-hander, played upside-down.
By the end of the '50s, Dale and his Del-Tones were playing to thousands of surfers and gremmies—surf slang for “fans and imitators of surfing legends”—at the Rendezvous Ballroom, in Balboa, Calif. There, he started ripping through a series of increasingly large speakers that he would regularly blow out.
One of the cool things about Dick Dale was that he actually surfed. Another is that his music blends the Middle Eastern sound of the oud, the lute his uncle played to accompany belly dancers in Massachusetts, with the driving rhythms of big-band drummer Gene Krupa.
Dale's signature tune, "Misirlou," is actually a traditional Greek song adopted by the big bands he loved. Dale revived the tune, it is said, when asked if he could play an entire song on a single guitar string. He opted to play it ridiculously fast and released it as a single in 1962. (Watch an amazing clip of Dale and the Del- Tones performing the song in the otherwise unmemorable 1963 movie "A Swingin' Affair" here.) Many other notable surf bands also recorded "Misirlou," which director Quentin Tarantino juiced up once again when he made it an integral part of the "Pulp Fiction" soundtrack in 1994.
Although the reverb-guitar sound and surf rock eventually became inseparable, Dale recorded his debut album, 1961's "Surfer's Choice," without any reverb whatsoever, adding it only later to augment his admittedly weak voice. And while the best surf rock evokes crashing waves and a ragged sort of teenage energy, Dale once described his personal style to an interviewer thusly: "When I play, it's like I'm fighting you. I make faces when I pull the strings, because it's pain, not showbiz. It's like working out!"
While many other acts profited nicely from the sound he pioneered, Dale was not among them. He quit the business in 1965, when he was diagnosed with cancer. However, he made a comeback in 1987 with "Back to the Beach," which starred Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, in whose movies he had appeared during the early '60s. His 1993 album, "Tribal Thunder" is a weird and marvelous mixture of surf guitar, heavy metal, and Native Americanisms.
An outspoken eccentric, the king of surf guitar is currently recovering from an April 2008 operation and subsequent chemotherapy. Let's wish him well on the semicentennial of surf rock's invention.
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