Somewhere - I've lost the reference - Phil Dirt mentions in passing that there was a dance called "the soul" that goes a long way toward explaining the tendency to refer to pre-surf or non-surf instrumental bands as "soul bands." Soul bands played music you could dance "the soul" to.

I haven't seen a description or video of "the soul" as a dance and I'm not sure if it would help me, since dancing is one of those things I can't really do. (Yes, there are people who can vouch for this.)

PD commented, I think, that this use of "soul music" is not the conventional sense of "soul music" in circulation today, but a sense specific to California pop music in the early 1960s. On the other hand, a lot of the bands in question did have something of an r&b repertoire - check the Sentinals albums, for example - and some acted as local backing bands for touring r&b acts: there are pictures of the Rhythm Kings with the Coasters, and the Revels mention backing Chubby Checker, etc. So even if the connection of the two kinds of "soul music" is not exactly main stream and obvious, I suspect there was some kind of connection.

I can't remember if Phil Dirt went as far as to associate "the soul" with a set of songs or a particular rhythm, but, plainly, if it was a dance it's likely that it required songs with rhythm matching the steps, and I've noticed that quite a few songs whose titles include the words "soul" or "soul beat" do have a distinctive rhythm. I'm not sure I could adequately characterize that rhythm, being somewhat rhythm-impaired, but it's something like doo doo doo DOOOO doo doo DOOOO doo doo DOOOO doot (pause) doot. A good song to listen to decipher this babbling would be Delano Soul Beat (see below). Or try Tough Soul by the Sentinals. That last one starts with drummer Barbata doing the rhythm part solo, which makes it kind of obvious.

Not all songs called something-Soul or Soul-something have this beat, and sometimes it is missing from one band's version of a song that otherwise has it. Ironically, it's not especially noticeable (to me anyway) in the Rhythm Kings' original Delano Soul Beat, but it's in the Renegaids cover of that, and in the Surf Teens' Delano Surf Beat. Sometimes it's in songs that lack the key word, e.g., it's in the Renegaids version of Intoxica. It's in the Rumblers' It's a Gas. I think it's in the versions of Revellion by both the Revels and the Sentinals, though really fast.

Maybe there's more than one "soul" rhythm or variations on it. Or maybe thre's some underlying factor that I haven't been able to separate out from specific examples. Checking further, I think most of the "soul" songs by the Rhythm Kings that have something like this are more like (pause) DOOOO (pause) doo doo DOO doot (I know - this is like listening to a tone deaf person sing), and now that I relisten, Soul Surfer does have something of that in it.

I hope somebody with a better understanding of what is going on can clarify this! My apologies for muddying the waters as far as I have. I'm afraid it's what I do best.

I checked some samples of rhythmic patterns I remembered seeing once on Wikipedia. See for example the article on backbeat. It sounds most like what this article calls delayed backbeat to me. They say it's the characteristic rhythm of early funk music.

I'll reserve judgement on "not happening." Not happening in surf per se, probably, but the stuff is so widely distributed in "central California" instrumental music - and not just in Hilder recordings - that my guess is that it actually was sweeping the nation, even if not everyone dug it or was aware of it. Hilder had a lot of bands from this area in his catalog. I'm not sure who caught it from whom. I don't think he invented it.

"Halting" is a really good description of the rhythm I was trying to describe. It sounds like you're dragging your feet a couple paces in some syncopated way and pausing (moving your upper body?)..., dragging your feet and pausing ..., ... If I actually did something like that I would look like a limping kangaroo with a twitch.

Another good example: on the CD version of the Surf Crazy compilation there's a live recording of Al Garcia & the Rhythm Kings doing Watermelon Man. It starts with the MC saying "We're gonna do the soul tonight - the original! I want all the best dancers, all the people that are sort of like out of their minds (to) - come (up), like - like right in front here. Let's make like a little circle and we're gonna judge this thing. We're gonna put like all the swingers, and all the surfers, and all the hodads that swing ... You guys got anything that's gonna, uh, like swing? ... " Al Garcia (I'm pretty sure it's his voice) responds saying sure, but first he'd like do what he says is a request that he has pending, Watermelon Man! And they proceed to launch into it. It has that hesitant beat, of course. I doubt that you could call it surf music, but I imagine it qualifies nicely as a soul beat instrumental.

"Gonna do the SOUUL toNIGHT" is a good paradigm phrase in this rhythm, by the way. And so is "Let's do the SOUUUL, uh-one more TIME!" which is part of a little ditty that Bob Vaught & the Renegaids insert into the middle of their recording of Intoxica. Or I think it would be if they did the ditty right. But they seem a little off - sheepish maybe. They're not even together and it sounds a bit strange.

Last edited: Jan 21, 2009 23:51:01

Here's my perspective... not the gospel, just how I think about it. The Soul was a dance, and some use of > soul

in surf titles was in reference to it. Others were more related to soul music.

While soul music was not exactly a direct influence in the sense of being able to hear the influence, the bands certainly played the more raucous R&B in a party-frat sort of way - > New Orleans,

Shout,

etc.

It sometimes had regional influences superimposed, such as the Mexican or Filipino musicians. This was the case with The Sentinals (and many others up te Central Coast), and Delano's Rhythm Kings (aka Soul Kings).

Al Garcia's band played local halls around Delano, and were not too dissimilar to the east LA bands live. An engineer where I work used to see them all the time, and is a relative of Vincent Bumatay, I gave him a bunch of their recordings, and he was shocked at how different they were from the band he saw live. Yu can hear this kind of disconnect on the Sentinals Live In Las vegas Lp and their vocals on Del-Fi, and on the live Surf Battle album.

The Al Garcia variety I recall being referred to as Pachuko Soul or Surf 'n' Soul. These are labels that I've carried forward because they are good descriptors.

Surf music per say wasn't-isn't very soulful in the black sense, but most of the musicians heard and were influenced in some way by soul.

I don't know much of anything about the dance called the soul, other than it was spreading across Southern California for a while, but never gelled beyond.

You can hear the strong influences in surf, and soul isn't really there, but the raw energy of the roots of soul - R&B particularly is very clear. In some ways, the young surfbands played and thought about R&B and soul just like the the English bands did. Bern Elliot's > New Orleans

is not far from Dave Myers & The Surftones if you ignore the arrangement. Both are very white and very hard driving.

That's my two cents.

Phil Dirt

Phil Dirt<br><a href="klzzwxh:0000">Reverb Central</a>

A possibly interesting postscript:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_Giants (yep, Wikipedia again)

The Mothers of Invention (ex-the Soul Giants)

Initially, the group was named "The Soul Giants" and consisted of drummer Jimmy Carl Black, bass player Roy Estrada, saxophonist Davy Coronado, guitarist Ray Hunt, and vocalist Ray Collins. Some biographers report that Collins got into a fight with Hunt in 1964 (according to Collins: "I never touched Hunt, I don't even remember shaking his hand."), after which Hunt quit the group and Frank Zappa took his place as guitarist - quickly becoming the leader of the group, which changed its name to "The Mothers" on Sunday, May 10, 1964 (that year's Mother's Day).

Jimmy Carl Black, the Indian of the group?

http://www.satanspilgrims.com
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Satans-Pilgrims/8210228553
https://satanspilgrims.bandcamp.com/
http://www.surfyindustries.com

Sonichris
Wasn't Ray Hunt the lead player in The Surfmen, later to be The Lively Ones after he left?

Yes, going by Bryan Thomas's notes to the Lively Ones' CD Surf Rider!/Surf Drums, Collectors' Choice Music, CCM-472-2. But these notes suggest that Chiaverini, Fitzpatrick, Griffith and Willenbring left the Surfmen to join up with Masoner, who had been playing with the Debonaires. > Thomas

Hunt, meanwhile, recorded two more Surfmen singles for Titan before joining the Soul Giants, who evolved into the Mothers of Invention after he was replaced by Frank Zappa.

Maybe for a while they were both using the name Surfmen? Band histories always remind me of Byzantine history, but it sounds like Hunt was often the odd man out. He joined up with Chiaverini from his earlier band the Expressos and they called the new band the Surfmen. Chiaverini recruited Hunt because he admired his whammy bar technique. > spskins

Jimmy Carl Black, the Indian of the group?

I don't know - all that comes to mind in that line is the Village People ...