Hey gang, I'm reemerging from a long forum absence with some potentially heretical musings on surf canon: Join me!

I think it's fair to claim The Wedge is one of the all-time great songs of the surf genre. It was one of my standout favorites when I discovered surf (and still is!), and made a big impact on my development as a budding surf guitarist, as I'm sure it has with lots of other folks. If someone totally naive to the genre asked me to point them to a single song that exemplifies all the best of surf music, I might well point them to Dick Dale's Checkered Flag recording. It's one of his finest achievements in an accomplished and historically important musical career. I'd even venture to say it's a perfect surf record.

Except...

Should we be a little uncomfortable that he's clearly lifted a large excerpt from Ernesto Lecuona's "Malagueña"? This is another crowning song by an influential musician, and it's pretty obvious Dick just arranged the melody from 3/4 into 4/4 with a little dressing for the turnaround to each verse of The Wedge.

Where's the line between inspired homage and blatant plagiarism? Does The Wedge cross it? Does that detract from its luster or greatness? (Full disclosure: I've released a handful of original songs of my own, and most of them flirt with this boundary as well). Has Dick ever been forthright about the song's connection to Malagueña or has he claimed this as his own idea?

Malagueña itself explicitly borrows some traditional Spanish melodic rhythms, but by my read that's more a strategy employing folk traditions than lifting someone else's work. As far as I understand the "proto-Wedge" melody (first at 0:58 in the youtube recording) is a Lecuona original, and Dick's take on it doesn't feel like he's trying on traditional Spanish melodies for size, it feels like he's copying Ernesto Lecuona for his own glory.

I still love both of these songs, but over time the explicit Malagueña melody has made me feel a little more squeamish about the purity of The Wedge. Maybe that's also a factor of me idolizing the song when I discovered it as a kid, and putting it on a pedestal of sorts. Still, it just makes me a little sad. Does anyone know anything more about the history of The Wedge and the connection between these two songs?

Last edited: Nov 29, 2018 23:20:38

wooza wrote:

Should we be a little uncomfortable that he's clearly lifted a large excerpt from Ernesto Lecuona's "Malagueña"?

No we shouldn't.

This is another crowning song by an influential musician, and it's pretty obvious Dick just arranged the melody from 3/4 into 4/4 with a little dressing for the turnaround to each verse of The Wedge.

I see it as (part of) the genius of Dick Dale, and actually a basic practice in all pop music. Integrating and quoting musical phrases from anything and everything, making it your own, and hopefully exciting. DD succeeded in that in a way that resonated for decades. This case is very far from the world of blatant plagiarism.

Last edited: Nov 30, 2018 06:19:53

Much of surf guitar music is closely related to other surf guitar music. If we were to fault The Wedge we would spend too much time finger pointing. Yah, when I hear The Wedge I think, "Malaguena ripoff. Wish I'd have done that first."

After growing up on Classical Music, I believe that much of my pleasure from surf guitar music derives from similarities to it. This reminds me of my ambition to write a surf guitar piece with themes adapted from Mahler's Symphony #2.

Insanitizers! http://www.insanitizers.com

Last edited: Nov 30, 2018 17:38:12

DeathTide wrote:

Weirdly, I recently adapted a Hungarian folk song to surf. It works beautifully, but I had to compose a couple parts to make it work. I also had to lose the second two parts of the original because they don’t really work for surf.

This is how we did almost all our Meshugga Beach Party versions of old Jewish melodies. Though gotta admit Hava Nagila already had a great bridge

Danny Snyder

"With great reverb comes great responsibility" - Uncle Leo

I am now playing trumpet with Prince Buster tribute band 'Balzac'

Playing keys and guitar with Combo Tezeta

Formerly a guitarist in The TomorrowMen and Meshugga Beach Party

Latest surf project - Now That's What I Call SURF

I dunno... I hear extremely familiar melodies in surf stuff all the time. It’s kind of like the blues, in that way. In fact, so many surf tunes are based off of 12 bar blues progressions, but with different tempos and vibes.

Guitarist for Black Valley Moon & Down By Law

Add Pintor and Latinia. It's in the canon.

Ernesto had a great contribution to our genre, thankfully.
In fact, lots of his music could also be considered a POPization of his own latin-jazz influences.
Let us pray there's not an EDM version out there somewhere.

Last edited: Dec 15, 2018 11:41:36

To me, that’s not at all the issue. Of course surf borrows riffs, but DD should have probably shared his songwriting credits, or at least acknowledged where that part came from.

It’s a real pickle with music and copyright laws!

Daniel Deathtide

What's called Andalusian Cadence, Am, G F E etc. . .Is old progression from Spain in the 1500's (Gypsies before that). More than likely from the Middle East (Persian) Where Gypsies originated. They sold string instruments from Persia in Europe and taught the buyer how to play them and made money from performance in towns they visited etc...

Hundreds of Surf Instrumentals that use this very progression.

SamDBL wrote:

I dunno... I hear extremely familiar melodies in surf stuff all the time. It’s kind of like the blues, in that way. In fact, so many surf tunes are based off of 12 bar blues progressions, but with different tempos and vibes.

Yeah its a mix of Big Band melodies with Blues arrangement etc. But even Big Band robbed a lot from Classical Music. Music is just recycled through the ages (nothing new under the Sun). The only change has been how technology change delivered or instruments performed on. The Biggest myth of all the Blues guitarist's started it all (the music developed from Civil War Music a.k.a. Irish Music)- hence folk music etc. post 1870's and used rhythms of African drumming to it etc...

I’ve had some time to think about it, and I guess I’ve gone back to being undecided. Or rather, it’s case by case. In this case I’d say it’s clearly lifted note for note, but if it’s that common I suppose it’s okay not to share the credit.

Last year I adapted a folk song. It’s perfect for surf, but a) I could only really use the first two of its four parts, and b) it needed a few parts filled in. So I composed a simple intro, and a part 3 that is original, but totally sounds just like the rest of the song. It’s about 75% adapted (from a violin / piano piece), and 25% original. From the start I had never intended to claim it was not an adaptation, and in fact call it a straight cover, even though no one I’ve ever heard has done it in rock. But really it’s “a partial adaptation with original parts.”

Daniel Deathtide