King of the Surf Guitar Dale passes away
Dale said he developed his musical style when he sought to merge the sounds of the crashing ocean waves he heard while surfing with melodies inspired by the rockabilly music he loved
Dick Dale, whose pounding, blaringly loud power-chord instrumentals on songs like “Miserlou” and “Let’s Go Trippin’” earned him the title King of the Surf Guitar, has died at age 81.
His former bassist Sam Bolle says Dick Dale passed away Saturday night. No other details were available.
Dale liked to say it was he and not the Beach Boys who invented surf music — and some critics have said he was right.
An avid surfer, Dale started building a devoted Los Angeles fan base in the late 1950s with repeated appearances at Newport Beach’s old Rendezvous Ballroom. He played “Miserlou,” “The Wedge,” “Night Rider” and other compositions at wall-ratling volume on a custom-made Fender Stratocaster guitar.
“Miserlou,” which would become his signature song, had been adapted from a Middle Eastern folk tune Dale heard as a child and later transformed into a thundering surf-rock instrumental.
His fingering style was so frenetic that he shredded guitar picks during songs, a technique that forced him to stash spares on his guitar’s body. “Beter shred than dead,” he liked to joke, an expression that eventually became the title of a 1997 anthology released by Rhino Records.
Dale said he developed his musical style when he sought to merge the sounds of the crashing ocean waves he heard while surfing with melodies inspired by the rockabilly music he loved.
He pounded rather than plucked the strings of his guitar in a style he said he borrowed from an early musical hero, the great jazz drummer Gene Krupa.
“Dale pioneered a musical genre that Beach Boy Brian Wilson and others would later bring to fruition,” Rolling Stone magazine said in its “Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll” adding “Let’s Go Trippin’” was released in 1961, two months ahead of the Beach Boys’ first hit, “Surfin.’”
The magazine called Dale’s song “the harbinger of the ‘60s surf music craze.”
Although popular around Southern California, Dale might have remained just a cult figure if surfing had not exploded in worldwide popularity during his peak creative years.
When the first of a series of “Beach Party” movies made to cash in on the phenomenon was released in 1963, it included Dick Dale and the Del-tones performing “Secret Surfing Spot” as teen hearthrob Annete Funicello danced on the beach.
Dale had released his first album, “Surfer’s Choice,” a year earlier. He followed it with four more over the next two years while appearing in several “Beach Party” sequels and other surfer movies.
Other popular Dale songs included “Jungle Fever,” ‘’Shake-n-stomp” and “Swingin’ and Surfin.’”