Dick Dale (1937 - 2019) The King of Surf Guitar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Dale

First video below has the first interview with Dick Dale in 1963 - most of the people in this video are long gone now except Frankie Avalon.

The Belairs (South Bay-Los Angeles, California, USA)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bel-Airs

The Belairs had a major influence at the start of the Surf Music era with the first Surf recording Mr Moto and beat Let's Go Tripping by a couple of weeks, even though Dick Dale was a much bigger act at that time in the live forum. This band seem to go through the break up mode like many other bands in the 1960's. Many acts followed The Ventures method of management were a parent was their manager (Wilsons Mom) , much like Dick Dale (Father), The Beach Boys (Father) etc etc … and a few bands broke up because parents were arguing about money etc (or lack of money). Not sure about The Belairs management. Eddie Bertrand left this group over a dispute of using tank reverb and his father became his manager for Eddie and The Showmen. Dick Dodd also left The Belairs at that time and joined Eddie and The showmen (They were best friends & neighbors etc). Eddie remained friends with Paul Johnson and re-recorded many Belair originals in the new Showmen style after he left The Belairs. Many cool originals in this band and is a case study for Surf Guitar styles.

The problem is no one could effectively define when Surf Music actually started as a genre by itself (Most bands thought they were playing 50's Rock n Roll instrumentals or Duane Eddie influenced material). Most of these bands loved The Ventures and 50's style guitar instrumentals, and much like when Country & Western bands were later called Rockabilly or defined as, so with Surf. This is still in dispute, but safe to say yes this is one of the first Surf Instrumental bands out there and had a major influence even today. The Frogmen could be called the first Surf Band with the 1959 single Underwater, was just a little before Dick Dale and The Belairs, but by 1961 its safe to say Surf Music was at least in the embryo stage by that time. So technically The Belairs is one of the first Surf Bands having started and recorded in 1961. Eddie Bertrand couldn't remember if it was the end of 1960 or early 1961, when they recorded Mr Moto or maybe they tried more than once, but its still a early Surf Song.

Band Line-up on second video

Jimmy Roberts - Piano
Paul Johnson - Rhythm Guitar
Dick Dodd - Drums...,, RIP (October 27, 1945 – November 29, 2013)

additional players
Jim Frias - Sax
Matt Quilter - Guitar

Last edited: Mar 21, 2019 14:09:15

Being I'm stuck in a historical mode right now and have many first wave bands to on the list to cover I guess I will continue with some more.

In many ways its the culture and times we grow up in that make us what we are, no less with Surf Music. California was a major mass production and military manufacturing hub for USA since World War II and originated from Henry Fords mass production line techniques and training. If I had to guess most of the parents of the kids that started Surf bands probably worked directly for these military manufactures or for companies associated with it. Even spin-off industries like Commercial Jet Aircraft manufactures etc .. Many were very high paying jobs for that time and aloud their kids to live in a middle class or higher life style that supported forming bands and buying expensive music equipment and recording music in studios.

Fender Guitars developed in this very same environment. It all started really by Country & Westren bands in California in the late 1940's wanting affordible equipment that would be as loud or louder than a Big Band brass section. These players were lower paid than Union Big Band players. So the market demanded lower cost equipment not possible with custom style manufactureing at that time. The only way possible to do that was mass production like other post World War II manufacturing lines around California.

Country & Western was a small community in California from the 1930's when migrants from Oklahoma in the depression years (Grapes of Wrath) moved to California for a better life to about the summer of 1948. Then it exploded on the scene in clubs being Big Bands went of strike and club owners hired these bands to fill the gap. Most only played country fairs before that time. So by 1948 people were dancing to Hill Billy music which took the country by storm even Hank Williams out sold the music of the day nationally. Big Band reminded people of the hard war years so it quickly diminished as pop culture after that time.

In less than 12 years Fender was a house hold name and featured on the Lawrence Welk show a sponcer every week. Welk had two studio musicians working on his show playing every fender guitar ever made, each week each guitarist would play a different Fender as a product placement devise. Many kids would see these guy's on TV every week and wanted one. Much like video games today kids in the late 1950's wanted a electric guitar. Again it was a Cold War mentality and technology change that drove all this that led to the creation of Instrumental Surf Music.

Even though most kids thought the Lawrence Welk show was corny and old people's music, it did impact what was played by the bands starting out, Many kids learned these songs by watching this show or reverse engineering instrumental guitar records etc on slowed down 45's to 33 1/3 etc, but thus is all they had to work with back then. Welk also had many other guitar slingers on his show which had a major impact on budding Surf Guitar players in the late 1950's. This is just a small sample, but many songs featured on Lawrence Welk show became later Surf staples like "Ghost Riders In The Sky" and "Dark Eyes", so many songs its amazing really, and many Big Band songs a s well, so there is some connection to Fenders advertising and product placement on the weekly Welk TV show and the early development of Surf.

Neil LeVang has to be the most influential guitarist in history as far as impact on kids wanting to play guitar and largely forgotten now. He was on The Welk show its whole production from 1954 to 1982 and played Fenders the whole length of that time.

Last edited: Mar 22, 2019 05:44:36

Much like Neil LeVang as a influential guitarist this guy has to be equal to or have as much influence as any other guitarist on Surf Instrumental Guitar players. Duane Eddie was 6 years younger than LeVang but both were cut from the same cloth. They each started playing in bands at only 13 years old, both had a major influence on budding guitarists of the late 1950's by way of records and TV. In fact Eddie Bertrand of The Belairs & Eddie and The Showmen fame cited Duane Eddy as his major influence starting out playing and you can here the influence in early Belairs material.

All I can say is Duane Eddy was a major influence and even the use of reverb on records was a model for later Surf recording. Tank Reverb didn't come out to 1961 but Eddy's record's was the catalyst if you will for its development. To electronically reproduce a literal large propane tank reverb echo on stage and in the studio with a device you could carry to gigs. Surf has never looked back to the pre-reverb days of just using natural venue echo like in the 50's.

Even more than lead guitar influence Eddy's records had some Sax on it as well which many early surf bands followed as a model for their bands as well. Mainly this happened because High School bands were still Big Band influenced and had music teachers that were fans of that era and had many Sax players in these school bands etc...but Duane Eddy's records were probably the major influence on these early bands like The Belairs and many other Surf bands starting out as well. You find that a lot in the history of music where there is a transition phase from one genre to the next. Today most Surf Bands have dropped the Sax player for other more hip instruments or pop culture expectations.

Duane Eddy

If everyone is exhausted by traveling around the world and by the amount of bands on this thread, don't worry there is like 4 times that figure ready to come on board here and post. I have 870 bands on my list and it looks like I could easily double that figure now it looks like.

Between all the bands I would guess the average is about 5 Cd's worth of material per group. Which is about 65,000 dollars worth of music to buy if I collected everything available . It would take me 41 years to listen to them all if I played two Cd's per week for only one hour each (Which is my normal habit). So I will be 100 years old when I finally play the last CD on my bucket list and can then finally die and go away I guess.

There is definitely more new Surf music than the First Wave 60's stuff. That makes sense being there is more affordable recording gear now than in the early 60's. I am totally amazed by how much is out there already and how good a lot of it is, all pro sounding stuff. There is even more main stream music out there than that, 10,000 times the amount of music produced than in the 1960's (Ok we don't hear much of it - but that is why, there is so much of it gets lost in the proverbial hay stack. One example is there are over 2000 new songs uploaded on streaming and download sites every day and 99 percent will have a average of only 4 downloads each etc. Now Surf is still small by comparison and still technically a small community, so has a lot of upside potential even with this many people in it.

All I can say is it must be very hard to so called "Make it" in music today. Even if your really good at what you do its gonna take a lot of tenacity and effort to make a dent in music business with as much material available out there already, let alone all the new songs still to appear in the future. You know all the bands around the world a going to crank out a lot of material in say the next ten years or so. There could be over 8 million new songs in the next decade. But there is like 1000 people per song population wise I would guess. So maybe its not that bad, but not every person is going to buy either. It might be the same ratio population wise as the 1960's maybe , I haven't looked into that yet, so maybe it's about the same anyway or just as hard as ever. Dunno

First I was amazed by the fact there were like over 700 Surf bands in the world (I original thought maybe a couple of hundred at best). Now I'm amazed by how many new albums were made over the years. Its incredible really when you think of it. I was totally unprepared for the amount and size of the effort by all the bands in Surf Music. I have to admit I missed most of what happened in Surf since the 1960's so have a lot of catching up to do. But wow I was sleeping

Ok back to the bands

Last edited: Mar 23, 2019 13:24:12

The Men From Tolex (Lancaster-Pennsylvania, USA)

https://www.facebook.com/MFTolex

Tiki Snar Snar

https://www.facebook.com/tikisnarsnarsurfmusic/

The Noble Gasses

https://www.facebook.com/thenoblegasses

The Grateful Surf (Cincinnati-Ohio, USA)

https://www.facebook.com/Grateful-Surf-1501932656796577/

Not sure if this is the same band

Aloha Swamp (Saint Petersburg, Russia)

https://messerchupsofficial.bandcamp.com/track/aloha-swamp

https://messer-chups.bandcamp.com/track/aloha-swamp

Aloha Swamp (Russia) Surf Hawaii rock band from Saint-Petersburg, project of Oleg Gitaracula from Messer Chups and Нож для Frau Muller. Live at The Place Club

Last edited: Mar 23, 2019 22:11:41