Dick Dale, King of the Surf Guitar, dies at 81

LOS ANGELES — Dick Dale, whose pounding, blaringly loud power-chord instrumentals on songs such as “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, said Dale passed away Saturday night.

Dale liked to say that it was he, 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-rattling volume on a custom-made Fender Stratocaster guitar.

“Miserlou,” which would become his signature song, had been adapted from a Middle Eastern folk tune that 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. “Better shred than dead,” he liked to joke, an Dale 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.

When the first of a series of “Beach Party” movies made to cash in on the surfing phenomenon was released in 1963, it included Dick Dale and the Del-tones performing “Secret Surfing Spot” as teen heartthrob Annette Funicello danced on the beach.

Dale’s musical influence was profound and included guitar virtuosos Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan and movie director Quentin Tarantino, who selected “Miserlou” as the theme song of his 1994 film “Pulp Fiction.”