Dick Dale in LIFE magazine: 1963
Submitted by
dp
on May 07, 2006.
article from August 30, 1963 LIFE magazine (p 82-83):
"King of Surfing Music", pictorial and article by Bill Ray
Title: "LIFE visits Dick Dale, 'King of Surfing Music': The Good Life of an Idol"
"Out of the West Coast has come a thumping teenage idol who is part evangelist, part Pied Piper and all success-- Dick Dale, chief purveyor of an ear-splitting noise called 'surf music.' The pounding rhythm of this wet rock'n'roll presumably echoes the sound of the big California surf, and Dale himself seems to echo the longings of the 12 to 20 set, who swarm to hear him wherever he plays, buy up his record albums and have lifted him into the $100,000-a-year bracket. At the moment, Dale is on his first nationwide tour, a six-week project he took on grudgingly because the life he loves is back home in California. There he goes surfing every morning, shows adoring visitors his menagerie of exotic animals, roars around in sports cars and lives it up in a bachelor house at Costa Mesa."
"He improvises most of the music he makes and admits that 'top-notch musicians would scoff at it.' But he uses it to attract kids so he can make friends with them, listen to their troubles and exhort them to civilised behavior. Liquor, short pants, fights and Capri slacks for girls are banned from the ballroom when Dick Dale plays. He refuses to issue pass-out tickets, thus preventing forays to the parking lot for nips and necking. He ends each performance with a spiritual, often interupts his playing to hand out advice: 'You must believe in treating the other person just like you'd want him to treat you.' He also says: ' You must learn humility' and takes his own advice, permitting no applause after his numbers."
This story has comments.
Comments are closed for this story. If you'd like to share your thoughts on this story
with the site staff, you can contact us directly.
cool piece, thanks for posting that!
WR
That's kinda weird...I wonder how many of those restrictions were the Ballroom's and/or community vs Dick Dale. I guess those were different times.
brian:
re: no applause allowed...that struck me as odd also...i wonder if that actually took place at Dick's shows back then, or whether it was something that Dick told the LIFE interviewer???
"ear-splitting noise called 'surf music.'" That had me on the floor, LMAO!! That's about as apropo description as I've ever heard! I love it!
Ivan
It's a very cool to read that, almost like getting my hands on a time capsule. Do you have the original article, DP? Do you you have the pictures?
I do have the original LIFE magazine from August 1963: picked it up on the Ebay recently. It has great photos (duh, of course, it's LIFE magazine)...but, even better photo captions...the photos had me absolutely busting up!
Ivan: yes! I agree, the "ear-splitting noise called surf music" line had me in stitches too...
Brian: exactly...a time machine...it's almost like we are surf-archeologists attempting to decipher the customs of a long lost society from the few relics it left behind...
I wanted to submit scans of the photos (and especially the photo captions), but I don't have a scanner at home. Perhaps I can spend a little time at work and get some nice scans posted in a few weeks...but, right now it's "end-of-the-school-year" crunch time...quite hectic at work...
Great article! I liked the part about the inspirational words...see, it did not start recently! Thanks for posting, Ran
Geez, Dick was making $100,000 in '63? Adjusting for inflation, that's $610,000 today. Not a bad year.
What a hoot!
Pictures of the story are to be found here [www.tunefan.com].
brian: cool! you found the photos!