Spatial Analysis of Surf Music, 1961-1966 (McCarter, 2010)

California State University, Northridge
A Spatial Analysis of Surf Music: 1961-1966
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
For the degree of Master of Arts in Geography,
GIS Program
By
David Frank McCarter
May 2012
The thesis of David Frank McCarter is approved:
____________________________________ _______________
Dr. Steve Graves Date
____________________________________ _______________
Dr. Ron Davidson Date
____________________________________ _______________
Dr. James Craine, Chair Date
California State University, Northridge
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Acknowledgments
I wish to thank all the people that have enriched my experience at graduate school.
Special thanks to Anna and Robert McCarter, my mom and dad, for encouraging me to
follow the academic paths that inspire me the most – geography, cartography, and GIS.
Big thanks to David Deis for teaching me the artistic craft of cartography and always
being there for advice and genius cartographic insights; Steve Graves and Ron Davidson
for taking time out of their busy schedules to read and critique my thesis; and Jim Craine
for accepting the role as my thesis chair, for all of the great advice he gave along the way,
and for encouraging me to think outside of the box during my cartographic endeavors.
Big thanks also to the legendary surf guitarists Bob Berryhill of The Surfaris and Dal
Winslow of The Trashmen for letting me interview them and providing me with valuable
and interesting information for my thesis. Finally, thanks to my fellow students in this
academic adventure who I shared good times, bad times, and ugly times, but mostly good
times, especially Crystal English, Elias Valencia, Rich Li, Danielle Grimm, Afsaneh
Rafii, Omar Mere, Ahmed Aldossary, Fiona Sun, and Mark Jacobi.
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Table of Contents
Signature Page ii
Acknowledgments iii
List of Figures v
Abstract viii
Introduction 1
Literature Review 7
Background 15
Methodology 46
Results 52
Conclusions 75
References 81
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List of Figures
Figure 1. Dick Dale and The Del-Tones 23
Figure 2. Dick Dale’s Fender Stratocaster 24
Figure 3. Fender Jaguar 25
Figure 4. Fender Dual Showman Amp 25
Figure 5. Fender Reverb Unit (front side) 26
Figure 6. Fender Reverb Unit (back side) 26
Figure 7. The Beach Boys 29
Figure 8. Jan and Dean 31
Figure 9. The Surfaris 33
Figure 10. The Chantays 35
Figure 11. The Trashmen 36
Figure 12. The Pyramids 37
Figure 13. The Astronauts 39
Figure 14. The Rendezvous Ballroom 44
Figure 15. Flyer promoting Dick Dale at The Rendezvous Ballroom 44
Figure 16. The Deauville Castle Club 45
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Figure 17. Flyer promoting “Surf Battle” at The Deauville Castle Club 45
Figure 18. Number of releases by surf bands from 1962-1966 52
Figure 19. Number of releases per month for 1962 53
Figure 24. Surf music releases from 1962-1966 57
Figure 25. Location mean for each year from 1962-1966 58
Figure 26. Location mean at six-month intervals 59
Figure 27. Let’s Go Trippin’ 65
Figure 28. Surfer’s Stomp 66
Figure 29. Surfin’ Safari 67
Figure 30. Pipeline 68
Figure 31. Honolulu Lulu 69
Figure 32. Bird Dance Beat 70
Figure 33. Walk Don’t Run ’64 71
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Figure 34. New York’s a Lonely Town 72
Figure 35. I Live for the Sun 73
Figure 36. Wipe Out 74
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Abstract
A Spatial Analysis of Surf Music: 1961-1966
By
David Frank McCarter
Master of Arts in Geography, GIS Program
In 1961, a new form of music was created in Orange County, California that swept across
the United States in a fervor before it was finally wiped out by the monstrous wave of
The British Invasion groups. This form of music was “surf music.” Surf music was an
enormous part of Southern Californian culture from 1961-1966 and, in the broader sense,
it was an integral part of American culture during that same time span. This new music
style had two major forms: instrumental, and vocal. A major characteristic of the style
was electric guitars with a “wet” sound created by using a Fender Reverb Unit to try to
emulate the sound of waves. Song titles and lyrics generally revolved around surfing,
having fun in the sun, and girls. Although the majority of the surf music that was
produced came from Southern California, there were also bands playing surf music from
such seemingly unlikely places as Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, and even
Minnesota. My thesis analyzes the spatial and temporal dynamics of this music genre at
the national level during its peak years from 1962-1966. Using top chart favorites from
radio stations across the country, a selection of ten hit songs that are definitive as surf
music have been analyzed to understand how successful this form of music was in
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various parts of the country compared to other parts of the country. Also analyzed were
dates and locations of vinyl record releases of surf music to understand the shift in
popularity of surf music both temporally and spatially during the different years from
1962-1966. Interviews were also conducted with musicians that were, and still are, in the
most popular surf bands.
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Introduction
The genre of surf music was born in Orange County sometime in 1961. In a
relatively short amount of time surf music went from being a small-scale regionalized
style of music to one of the most popular forms of music in America. I analyze and
discover the spatial and temporal dynamics of surf music at the national level from 1961-
1966. I discuss specific factors that contributed to how successfully and rapidly surf
music diffused to the rest of America thus becoming a huge part of American popular
culture. There are many case studies on cultural diffusion that have discussed various
forms of musical expression such as jazz and blues; however, there are currently no case
studies on the factors involved in the diffusion of surf music. Drawing on previous work
by Redlich (1954) and Ford (1971), I believe a combination of various factors contributed
to the diffusion of surf music, which are human interaction, human migration, and
objectification. However, these reasons are not sufficient enough by themselves to
explain the highly successful diffusion of surf music.
I believe other reasons contributed to this diffusion. The allure created by
Southern California’s fun in the sun imagery certainly influenced how surf music evoked
and represented that image. As Halfacree and Kitchin (1996) argue, geography through
imagery has been used by bands as a resource to develop their art form as well as sustain
musical genres and market and promote them beyond their place of origin. Also
important is the relationship that surf music had with technological innovations of the
music world. For example, the inventor of surf music, Dick Dale, worked closely with
Leo Fender in developing a new, and in many ways superior, guitar amplification unit
known as the 100-Watt Dual Showman Amp. This amplifier helped enable the surf bands
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to play at a much larger volume while retaining a great sound. As Bob Berryhill, guitarist
of The Surfaris, remembers: “When you played in a large venue, the Fender instruments
that we had, they were the only way people could hear what you were doing. The drums
would echo in the room…the only way to tap through it was with a Fender Showman
Amp” (McCarter 2011). Other products that Fender created that were widely used by surf
bands include the Reverb Unit, and revolutionary electric guitars such as the Stratocaster
and the Jaguar.
Surf music has something in common with space and many other major concepts
in geography: it is hard to define. Particular songs and bands are regarded by some as surf
music, while others argue otherwise. To help illustrate the problem with definition, in
1961 Chubby Checker released a very successful song, ‘Let’s Twist Again’, which is not
regarded as a surf song. But two years later, Chubby Checker twisted his way into the
surf music scene with his album Beach Party; on it is a song called ‘Let’s Surf Again’.
‘Let’s Twist Again’ and ‘Let’s Surf Again’ are almost identical, except he replaced the
word “Twist” with “Surf.” Hence, with this small change was the birth of a surf song.
When Mike Love of The Beach Boys was asked to define surf music, he replied,
“It’s just beat music with surfing words” (Burt 1986, 25). Dick Dale on the other hand,
who is often credited with the invention of surf music, wanted to create music that
emulated the feeling he had while surfing. According to him, “Real surfing music is
instrumental… characterized by heavy staccato picking on a Fender Stratocaster guitar,
and it has to be a Stratocaster” (Burt 1986, 25). According to Bob Keene, president of
Del-Fi Records, it is “music in which the lead guitar plays a double beat, with the
instrumentation invariably consisting of two guitars, bass, and sax” (Billboard Magazine
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1963, 26). And according to Murry Wilson, composer, music publisher, and father of
three of the five Beach Boys, “The basis of surfing music is a rock and roll bass beat
figuration, coupled with a raunch-type weird-sounding lead guitar, an electric guitar plus
wailing saxes. Surfing music has to sound untrained with a certain rough flavor to appeal
to the teenagers. As in the case of true C. & W., when the music gets too good, and too
polished, it isn’t considered the real thing” (Billboard Magazine 1963, 26).
Some things can be agreed upon. The sound often has reverb on the guitars, and
the bands generally consist of two guitars, a bass, drums, and sometimes a piano or sax.
The form is either instrumental (i.e. Dick Dale and The Deltones, The Ventures) or with
vocals (i.e. The Beach Boys, Jan and Dean). The topics often include the beach, surfing,
girls, cars, and the ideal early 1960s California teenage lifestyle. Many times the song
titles had a surfing connotation, such as ‘Surfin’ Bird’, ‘Surfer Girl’, ‘Wipe Out’, ‘Surfin’
U.S.A.’, ‘Pipeline’, and ‘I Live for the Sun’.
Dick Dale & the Deltones experimented with surf music and shaped the surf
sound in the summer of 1961. Their frequent live shows were a big hit at the Rendezvous
Ballroom in Balboa, California where they often had an audience of 4,000 teenagers and
his debut single ‘Let’s Go Trippin’,’ topped the California charts and made it into the
Billboard Hot 100. A few of the other top surf music groups from Southern California
included The Beach Boys from Hawthorne, who were the most successful and well-
known of the surf bands; Jan and Dean from West Los Angeles; and The Surfaris from
Glendora. The two most popular surf bands from outside of Southern California were The
Astronauts and The Trashmen. The Astronauts were a Midwest high school rock and roll
band from Boulder, Colorado who, because of the huge success of The Beach Boys, were
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asked by RCA if they played surf music. They answered “Yes,” and became a surf band
with a record contract. The Trashmen, a Midwest band from Minneapolis, Minnesota,
were best known for the song ‘Surfin’ Bird’, a combination of two songs (‘Papa Oom
Mow Mow’ and ‘The Bird is the Word’) by the doo-wop group The Rivingtons.
Many events contributed to surf music being played far away from the sunny
beaches in Southern California in locations like Colorado and Minnesota. May (2002)
argues that the Californian teen became viewed as a national icon and that the idealized
image of the Californian youth culture helped ease the country’s post-war nerves.
Southern California became the geographic location of mass media productions where
movies, television programs, and magazines showed it as an ideal place with “…a life of
cars, fashionable clothing, the drive-in, and the beach…” (May 2002, 5). Movies like
Gidget (1959) portraying an ideal existence filled with sand and surf replaced movies like
Rebel Without a Cause (1955) that illustrated the moral decay of American youth. In
1955, Disneyland, “The Happiest Place on Earth,” opened in Anaheim, and that same
year saw the beginning of The Mickey Mouse Club that starred California kids who later
became role models for the kids living in other states. Migration to California in the
1950s and 1960s made the state a mecca for baby boom families and American teenagers
had become primed to buy into the cultural idealism of California. May (2002) also
argues that the demise of surf music wasn’t just a case of the British invasion led by The
Beatles, but that the Californian youth culture shifted from idealization to an image of
youth taking too many drugs, protests, and race riots.
This cultural idealism of California also prompted vacations to its beaches. Some
of the members of The Trashmen took a vacation to Southern California, and only
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months after the vacation released their classic hit ‘Surfin’ Bird’. Similarly, Bobby Fuller
of The Bobby Fuller Four traveled from El Paso, Texas to Southern California and also
witnessed the sounds of surf music at the Rendezvous Ballroom. Fuller brought this surf
sound back to his band in El Paso and also opened a club where these surf sounds could
be played in front of Texas teenagers (Chidester and Priore 2008).
Migration, even if it was just temporary migration while going to school, played a
role in popularizing surf music thousands of miles away from its origins. According to
John Zambetti, lead guitarist of New York City’s surf band Malibooz, “A lot of the kids
in the private schools around New York and Connecticut came from the West Coast.
When their parents sent them off to boarding school, they came with stacks of records
that you couldn’t easily find on the East Coast…Dick Dale singles, ‘Mr Moto’ by the
Belairs and others” (Chidester and Priore 2008, 186).
Giving rise to the whole surf culture were the advancements in surfboard designs.
Previously, surfboards were made from expensive balsa wood, which meant that the
boards were too expensive for the average teenager. They were also heavy and hard to
carry and maneuver; not to mention the boards were scarce because they could take three
weeks to craft one. But when Hobie Alter and Dale Velzy started using foam, the boards
became much lighter, easier to maneuver, and the cost went down because they could
now make 160 boards in a week at a cost of $70 - $80. As Alter noted, “If that movie’d
[Gidget] come out in the balsa era…no one could have supplied ‘em” (Kampion 1998,
65). This design improvement to the surfboard is important to surf music because it made
surfing easily accessible to teenagers, which in turn paved the way for all the other
aspects of surf culture.
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Another factor that cannot be underestimated is the expanded highway
construction that was going on at the time. Although it was not a technological advance,
as highways had existed for some time, the Interstate Highway System was President
Eisenhower’s campaign to improve United States highways in the mid-1950s, and much
of this construction was in California. It was now much simpler for youths to travel to the
beach and to music venues where they could be exposed to surf bands. This produced a
highway/car culture in Southern California that was intertwined with the surf culture.
This is made obvious by the fact that most surf bands also recorded “hot rod music,” -
surf music except that the theme was switched from surfing to cars. Examples include, ‘I
Get Around’ and ‘Little Deuce Coupe’ by The Beach Boys, ‘The Little Old Lady from
Pasadena’ and ‘Dead Man’s Curve’ by Jan and Dean, ‘The Scavenger’ by Dick Dale and
His Del-Tones, and ‘Hey Little Cobra’ by The Rip Chords.
My surf music research will expand on the current music geography literature.
Much of music geography literature discusses country music and its substyles or rock
music and its substyles. Geographers have also written on ethnic music, religious music,
martial music, and stage and film music. Geographers have written almost nothing
however, on surf music. My research will help fill this gap in surf music literature by
examining the spatial and temporal aspects of this musical style.
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Literature Review
Music Geography
Music geography emerged in the late 1960s with Nash’s (1968) “Music Regions
and Regional Music.” In 1973, Zelinsky encouraged geographers to study folk music as a
methodology in order to better understand the intricate spatio-temporal aspects of
American culture (Zelinsky 1973). Arkell (1991, 30) understood this concept when he
wrote “A discerning collection of blues records can act as a vinyl stratigraphy of North
America’s black population, reflecting the development of a people and of how it
responded to the environmental changes that were thrust upon it.” By the 1980s and
1990s, music geography became accepted and legitimized by publications in academic
journals and conference paper presentations.
Carney (1998) revealed that most of the research falls within ten approaches and
themes. A regional theme studies the delimitation of music regions and the interpretation
of regional music. A second theme discusses how music evolves with place and place-
specific music. A third looks at a specific cultural hearth and diffusion of music
phenomena from that place. A fourth explores the spatial dimensions of music using
human migration, transportation routes, and communication networks. The fifth looks at
how the symbolic and psychological elements of music shape the perceptions of place
and the sixth studies the effect that music has on the cultural landscape. The seventh
theme is the spatial organization of the music industry. The eighth analyzes the
relationship between music and the natural environment. A ninth theme is the function of
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nationalistic as well as antinationalistic music and the tenth major theme is how music
spatially interrelates with other cultural traits.
Other important contributors to music geography include Halfacree and Kitchin
(1996), who used Manchester, United Kingdom as a case study to argue that different
cities develop musical distinctions which are utilized by the bands to develop, sustain,
and promote their sound to a global audience. Regarding how the popularity of an image
of a place changes over time, Ford and Henderson (1974) researched big hit songs from
1890 to 1970 to find the ones that made a reference to a place or region and found that
the regions that were favored in popular music shifted from New York in the 1890s to the
South in the 1920s back to New York in the 1930s and then to Southern California in the
1960s. Willett (2010) wrote about the music scene in California, and argued that
following World War II, migrations and technological advances created changes in
popular music and a major advantage of the music scene in California was that it lacked
the musical traditions of the American Northeast.
Of great importance to the sounds of music are the instruments that are used to
produce those sounds. Cooper (1994) discussed how stringed instruments were
introduced into the Hawaiian Islands and how the Hawaiians made their own variations
of those instruments. By 1916, their style of music was a huge success in the United
States. Wheeler (1990) wrote extensively on guitars that were made in the United States,
covering the history and designs of the various guitars, including those made by Fender
in Orange County, California preceding and during the surf music explosion in that same
county. Smith (1995) also wrote about the history of Leo Fender and his company that
produced innovative musical instruments that were highly utilized in surf music.
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Supplying valuable data that can be utilized by music geographers is The
Airheads Radio Survey Archive (ARSA) (accessed April 7, 2011), which is a non-profit
website that preserves radio history by having a database of radio station surveys. These
surveys and the way the database is organized, enables the user to compare how a
particular song ranked at various radio stations across the country.
Diffusion
There is a body of work discussing the diffusion of cultural ideas, and more
specifically, to that of various music styles. Redlich (1954) studied the diffusion of
cultural ideas and argued that there are three main ways that cultural ideas diffuse: the
personal correspondence between senders and receivers via being neighbors or
congregating in a face-to-face situation; act of human migration where people bring their
ideas with them, thereby introducing or strengthening these ideas to new places and
populations; and objectification, where ideas become physical objects that can be
diffused via retailers of mass media.
Geographers have done case studies on such music styles as rock and roll, blues,
and jazz to analyze the diffusion of music. Perhaps the most notable is that of Ford
(1971) who wrote about how rock and roll was born and how and why it diffused the way
it did. Ford found that the American south gave birth to most of rock and roll’s
components, yet it was the country’s last region to accept it. Ford argues it was most
likely due to the south’s satisfaction with country and blues, while the north was
relatively amusical.
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The normal diffusion route of cultural ideas is for the cultural idea to begin in the
core and work its way outward to the periphery. Several music geographers have found
that the opposite is true when it comes to the diffusion of a music style. Glasgow (1979),
discussing the diffusion of jazz music, explained the key factors involved with why jazz
music diffused from the periphery to the core and why it was accepted in Chicago a
decade before it was accepted in New York City. Glasgow found that diffusion seemed to
be related to westward migration from three major cultural hearths from the east coast.
Arkell (1991) wrote on the origins and diffusion of the blues from its birth in the
Mississippi Basin to the north as it mirrored the movement of Africans from the
plantations of the rural South to the urban North. Kuhlken and Sexton (1991) discussed
the diffusion of zydeco music arguing that the diffusion was a result of the migration of
the zydeco musicians as they mirrored the migration of the Creole population followed
by commercial recording and distribution of their music as well as national and
international tours by the zydeco musicians. Lewis (2008) studied the diffusion of black
gospel music in Denmark and argued that diffusion theory itself is not sufficient enough
by itself to explain its successful diffusion. Lewis argued that other perspectives such as
ethnohistorical analysis and globalization forces are needed in order to understand why
black gospel music successfully diffused in Denmark.
In addition to understanding how a style of music diffuses, it is important to
understand the factors involved in why a regional music style is popular in its point of
origin but finds little success at diffusing outside its regional realm of existence.
Understanding the factors that contribute to why a regional sound does not diffuse is
important in understanding how a regional sound does diffuse. Gill (1993) researched
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popular music in the Northwest (“Northwest Sound”), centered in the Seattle/Tacoma,
Portland, and Vancouver, British Columbia areas, from 1958-1966. He explains its birth,
death, and the events that took place in-between and further argues why the Northwest
Sound did not successfully diffuse and become popular outside the Northwest. In the late
1950s this area was still relatively remote. The most successful band to emerge from the
region at that time was The Ventures, who hailed from Tacoma, and became much more
noted for their contributions to surf music. The Ventures style of music was different
from the other bands in the region in that “their music wasn’t raunchy like that of the
Northwest groups… it was smooth, polished and technically precise” (Shaw 1980, 105-
6). The Northwest sound wasn’t able to compete against the emergence and flood of
British bands whose “sound was cleaner, more polished, and more melodically and
vocally sophisticated” (Gill 1993, 127).
Surf Music and Surf Culture
There is a lack of literature written by geographers on the style of surf music.
Carney (1999) wrote Cowabunga! Surfer Rock and the Five Themes of Geography, the
purpose of which was to show how surf music could be used to teach the five main
themes of geography to high school students. Carney discusses three diffusion principles
and how they can be illustrated with surf music: Contagious expansion diffusion, when a
cultural idea spreads from personal contact or face-to-face communication; (2) relocation
diffusion, when people migrate to a new area while bringing cultural ideas with them;
and (3) hierarchical diffusion, when a cultural idea spreads from one level of society to
another (i.e. core to periphery or vice-versa).
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Carney’s central focus however was on how to engage students with the
fundamental concepts of geography. Therefore, to learn more about surf music, it is
crucial to look outside geographical literature. Chidester and Priore (2008) wrote
numerous essays on surf music of the 1960s and its relationship and embeddedness with
the pop surf culture. They also explored the surf music scene that took place on the East
Coast and the one that took place in the Midwest. They argue that band members from
outside of California would take a vacation to Southern California and witness the energy
from the surf bands at The Rendezvous Ballroom and the excitement it created, and then
brought it home with them.
May (2002) wrote extensively on the California culture in the years preceding the
birth of surf music and the cultural transitions and perceptions that took place that led
into the surf music craze. Kampion (1998) wrote about the history of surf culture from its
origins in Hawai’i to the big-wave contests of today. Wardlaw (1991) discussed various
aspects of the surfing culture including how many surf bands recorded their music in the
early 1960s and the popularity of surfing films such as The Endless Summer. Booth
(1996) discussed surfing films and videos and the role that these approximately 200 films
and videos played in the surfing culture, and Ormrod (2005) discussed the popularity and
success of Bruce Brown’s surf movie The Endless Summer, which is considered by many
as the definitive surf movie. Stecyk (2001) wrote about the success of the surfing movie
Gidget and the impact that it had on surfing and the culture that grew from it, while
Rensin (2008) wrote extensively about the legendary surfer Miki Dora and the
commercialization of Malibu and surfing that exploded after the release of Gidget.
Meanwhile, Zion (1987) studied the musical trends of Australia and found that American
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music was a big hit there, but by late 1963 the popularity of surf music was declining and
being replaced by the Beatles.
Packed with valuable data, Blair (2008) documented hundreds of surf bands of the
early 1960s, and while a vast amount of those bands were from Orange County,
California, Blair discovered that many were from such places as Colorado, Minnesota,
Wisconsin, the East Coast, and even Belgium. He reveals what records were released on
what labels and provides the year and approximate month of the releases.
Burt (1986) wrote on the origins and histories of some of the more popular surf
bands; he chronicled the birth and life of such bands as Dick Dale & the Deltones, The
Astronauts, The Trashmen, The Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, and many others. Wood
(1995) also wrote about some of the top surf music musicians and groups such as Dick
Dale, The Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, and The Pyramids, while Dalley (1996)
interviewed members of 49 different surf bands from the 1960s which tell the bands’
histories from their beginnings to their ends. Crowley (2011) also wrote about the
histories of many of the surf bands, and also discussed Leo Fender’s role in surf music
and the guitars and amplifiers that he produced that were utilized by the surf bands.
Gaines (1986) wrote extensively on The Beach Boys and chronicled their history,
influences and hits. Billboard Magazine (1963) also covered the topic of surf music with
descriptions of the style from Bob Keene (president of Del-Fi Records) and Murry
Wilson.
Blair (1996) wrote an overview of sixty surf songs from the 1960s that had an
influential and historical impact on the surf music genre, while Billboard (2011) released
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Top 30 “Summer” Songs of all Time, which included songs from the beginning of the
Billboard Hot 100 chart on August 4, 1958 to the present. Of those thirty songs, five of
them were by The Beach Boys, one was by The Surfaris, and one was by Jan and Dean.
The San Gabriel Valley Examiner (July 1-7, 2010) discussed the history of The Surfaris
including their 1962 hit song ‘Wipe Out’ and Mizutani (2010) did an interview with
guitarist Bob Berryhill of The Surfaris and discussed the history and success of ‘Wipe
Out’. Burt (1999) wrote the liner notes for The Surfaris’ album Wipe Out/The Surfaris
Play and discusses their history and the events that took place in the studio during the
recording of ‘Wipe Out’, while The Chantays Official Website (accessed February 18,
2012) tells the history of The Chantays, who released their classic surf hit ‘Pipeline’ in
January 1963. Alfonso (2006) wrote the liner notes for Dick Dale’s album Surfer’s
Choice and discussed Dale’s success as a musical innovator and his collaboration with
Leo Fender, and Palmer (1995) wrote about Dale’s unique playing style and technique.
Dalley (1997) wrote the liner notes for The Astronauts’ album Surfin’ with the
Astronauts/Everything is A-OK! and covered their history and success as a Colorado surf
band, while The Trashmen (1990) provided liner notes for their album Live Bird 65-67,
discussing their history and success as a Minnesota surf band.
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Background
Pre-Surf Music Influences
One of the music styles that had an influence on surf music was Hawaiian music.
Bob Berryhill of The Surfaris recalls a trip he took to Hawai’i with his family when he
was 13: “I saw a guy playing the ukulele on the stage and I just fell in love with that
music. So I started out really loving the Hawaiian music that was played in Hawaii on
ukuleles and steel guitars” (McCarter 2011). Just two years later, his band would record
the classic song ‘Wipe Out’.
Hawai’i was where surfing was invented, so it was natural that Southern
Californian surfers bonded early on with the islands of Hawai’i and the music that
resonated from them. Sailors and cowboys from Spain, Portugal, and Mexico brought
guitars with them to Hawai’i, and the Hawaiian cowboys learned how to control cattle
herds with the hypnotic melodies that they could produce. Meanwhile, Portuguese sailors
brought with them an early form of the ukulele, and not too long after that in the early
20th century, Hawaiians invented the slack key and then the steel guitar (Cooper 1994).
The slack key is a tuning style on the guitar where strumming the open strings produces a
harmonious chord. The steel guitar was a new style of playing the guitar and was
invented by Joseph Kekuku; “He discovered that if you slid a solid object up or down the
strings after you had plucked or strummed them, you got the chord sliding up and down
in a glissando” (Cooper 1994, 649). This new style also required a new playing posture,
where the instrument is played either on the lap or on a stand.
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In 1915, the San Francisco Panama-Pacific Expo celebrated the opening of the
Panama Canal. The Territory of Hawai’i represented themselves with the sounds of their
string bands; it made such a huge hit that by 1916 more Hawaiian records were sold in
the United States than any other type of music (Cooper 1994). Not long after, the stage
play Bird of Paradise opened on Broadway, and introduced a mainstream audience to a
combination of percussion and chant-style of ancient Hawaiian tradition, musical
influences from the Mexican vaquero guitarists, and the ukulele. Soon after that, Tin Pan
Alley songwriters wrote their own versions of Hawaiian novelty songs. These versions
became known as “hapa haole,” which basically translates to ‘half white - half Hawaiian’
(Chidester and Priore 2008).
One of the key musicians in the popularity of Hawaiian music was Bennie
Nawahi, nicknamed “King of the Ukulele,” and who was also highly competent at
playing the steel guitar and the mandolin. He was a lively and hard-to-forget showman
who played the steel guitar with his feet and the ukulele behind his head with one hand.
Another key musician was Sol Ho’opii, who played the steel guitar combining American
jazz with traditional Hawaiian music. He recorded extensively throughout his musical
career and developed the tuning that led to the development of the pedal steel guitar and
the modern country music/Nashville sound that is so well known today (Cooper 1994).
From the late 1930s on, Hawaiian-style bands popped up all around the world. In
the 1950s, tourists flocked to Hawai’i, and were further exposed to the catchy and
contagious Hawaiian musical vibrations (Cooper 1994). The ukulele’s extreme portability
as well as its mellow sounds reminiscent of the beautiful and surf-drenched islands of
Hawai’i made it a popular and ideal instrument for outings to the beach. The steel guitar
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and Hawaiian-type arrangements can be heard in such songs as ‘Tears’, ‘Blue Surf’, and
‘Lisa’ by The Impacts from San Luis Obispo. Chidester and Priore (2008, 10) also argued
that “[Beach Boys] leader Brian Wilson’s jazz roots could be traced as much to Hawaiian
music as to the Four Freshmen (who had taken key vocal arrangement phrasing from the
Hawaiian style).”
Another main pre-surf music influence was the early surf movies by such
independent film makers as Bud Browne, Greg Noll, John Severson, and Bruce Brown.
These were documentaries that had instrumental background playing so that narration
could take place without conflict between the two. The instrumental music styles being
played were Hawaiian, West Coast Jazz, flamenco guitar, and Duane Eddy-styled rock
and roll (Chidester and Priore 2008).
One of the bands that was very influential was The Fireballs who, in 1959,
recorded the hits ‘Torquay’, ‘Bulldog’, and ‘Vaquero’. According to Bud Browne curator
Gordon McClelland, “He relied a lot on The Fireballs. They were a New Mexico
instrumental band that fit perfectly, with flamenco melodies done in a rock ‘n’ roll
context. The Fireballs were really one of the most important influences on surf
instrumental bands later on. Bud had two of their albums in his backlog, and he used
them liberally” (Chidester and Priore 2008, 55). According to Bud Browne in a 2000
interview, “It was just music that we liked, Hawaiian records, ‘Pipeline’, whatever fit”
(Chidester and Priore 2008, 55). According to Bill Humphrey, drummer of the Revelairs,
“Surf bands would pull material directly from such films. Black Saddle was a short-lived
TV show, and I heard that song first in the Bud Browne film Spinning Boards before we
recorded it with the Revelairs” (Chidester and Priore 2008, 55).
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John Severson also played an important part in shaping what would later evolve
into surf music. According to Mike Love of the Beach Boys:
For a teenage kid growing up in Southern California in the late ‘50s and
early ‘60s, I can’t see how you couldn’t be influenced by that lifestyle.
The surfing cult and the movies by John Severson definitely, without a
doubt, influenced me and my high school friends, which in turn spread
over to the band that my cousins Brian, Carl and Dennis and I formed at
this time. Four out of five of our first hit singles even included surfing in
the title, ‘Surfin’ (1961), ‘Surfin’ Safari’ (1962), ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.’ (1963),
and ‘Surfer Girl’ (1963) (Chidester and Priore 2008, 59).
According to surfer Steve Pezman:
Severson was actually an artist and had very stylistic ideas about music.
One of the sequences where music really worked for me was in Surf
Fever. He had a hot, offshore wind morning at Secos with Dewey Weber,
with flamenco guitar in the background. It was just this strumming and
arpeggios, and it worked so well, it had a huge influence on the sport, to
the point where it made flamenco guitar a popular cultural sidebar to
surfing. And then you see people like David Cheney and Kemp Aaberg
going to Spain to study flamenco guitar (Chidester and Priore 2008, 57-
58).
Don Murray, drummer of the band Crossfires, concurs that flamenco was a huge
influence, “During the ‘50s, Spanish guitarists and flamenco dancers would tour the
beatnik coffeehouses that dotted the West Coast. They had a ‘cool generation’ audience
that embraced them as readily as they did jazz players, folk singers and poetry readers. It
was no accident that the electrified instrumental surf music featured Spanish themes.
Acoustic guitars could be taken to the beach and were played around surfers’ campfires at
night. The chosen music at those campfire gatherings was Spanish melodies” (Chidester
and Priore 2008, 95-96).
West Coast cool jazz also played a part in surf music’s origins. Bruce Brown’s
Slippery When Wet and Barefoot Adventure both featured a soundtrack by cool jazz alto
saxophonist and flutist Bud Shank.
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Major Surf Bands
From 1961–1965, many surf bands were playing shows and recording, while
countless others never left the garage. It has been calculated by surfing author Lee
Wardlaw (1991) that more than 800 surf bands recorded one song or more in the early
1960s. There were many surf bands that had an impact on their genre, but the surf bands
that were most influential were: Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, The Beach Boys, Jan and
Dean, The Surfaris, The Chantays, The Trashmen, The Pyramids, and The Astronauts.
All of these bands had hit songs that placed very well on the Billboard Hot 100, so they
were played in radio stations across the country and reached a national audience. Dick
Dale started surf music, and numerous bands were influenced by his style and the Fender
equipment that he used to help create his sound. The Beach Boys and Jan and Dean were
the most successful and popular of the vocal surf bands and each of them had numerous
songs that ranked in the Billboard Hot 100. ‘Wipe Out’ by The Surfaris and ‘Pipeline’ by
The Chantays reached numbers two and four, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100, and
are the highest charting and best known of the surf instrumentals. The Trashmen and The
Astronauts were the most popular surf bands outside of Southern California and they had
developed a unique and distinct surf sound. “Midwest surf bands were often inspired by
the Trashmen (from Minneapolis) and the Astronauts (from Colorado), so they tend to be
wild like the former, and rich with reverb like the latter” (Chidester and Priore 2008,
107).
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Dick Dale and the Del-Tones
Dick Dale (born Richard Monsour) moved from Quincy, Massachusetts to El
Segundo, California in 1954 (Alfonso 2006) and is acknowledged as the first artist whose
sound and style were labeled as “surf music.” Dale wanted to create music that matched
the way he felt while surfing: “There was a tremendous amount of power I felt while
surfing, and that feeling of power was simply transferred from myself into my guitar
when I was playing surf music. I couldn’t get that feeling by singing, so the music took
an instrumental form” (Burt 1986, 25). “Dale drew on his Middle Eastern heritage (his
family, the Monsours, were Lebanese), adapting the rapid-fire, double-stroke picking he
heard his uncle use on the oud [a lute-like Middle Eastern instrument] to his own Fender
Stratocaster. Dale’s guitar playing was fast, twangy, and metallic, with long-lined Middle
Eastern melodies slithering along atop shimmering Spanish-inflected chording,
punctuated by slamming slides up the neck” (Palmer 1995, 41). Adding to Dale’s unique
playing style was that he was a left-handed guitarist playing a guitar for a right-handed
player, so he turned his guitar upside down and left the strings where they were, resulting
in the low E string being positioned on the bottom rather than the top, which altered the
chord patterns and picking techniques (Wood 1995).
Dale’s song ‘Let’s Go Trippin’,’ recorded on August 23, 1961, is considered the
first surf instrumental. It reached number 60 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it the first
surf hit to reach a nation-wide audience. Also making it onto the Billboard album chart at
number 59 was his album Surfers’ Choice (Blair 2008). His hit song ‘Miserlou’, released
in May 1962, was the first popular song to feature a Fender Reverb Unit on lead guitar
20
(Blair 1996). He also made four film appearances: Let’s Make Love (1960), A Swingin’
Affair (1963), Beach Party (1963), and Muscle Beach Party (1964) (Blair 2008).
A friend and mentor of Dale’s was Leo Fender, who had a small factory in
Fullerton, California where he created amplifiers, speakers and musical instruments
(Alfonso 2006). Fender was neither a guitarist nor a stringed-instrument player; he was
an electronics guy that started out with an electronics and radio repair shop and found
himself repairing guitar amps for local blues, rhythm & blues, and country & western
artists. “Fender began building amps with an eye toward making them more durable and
easier to repair, as he was frequently confronted with working musicians who needed
immediate, costly, and time-consuming repairs in order to feed their families” (Crowley
2011, 35). Since Fender didn’t play guitar himself, he was always soliciting local
musicians for their opinions on how to make his designs better and more functional.
Some of Fender’s innovative creations that helped shape the surf music sound were the
Stratocaster (Figure 2) and Jaguar (Figure 3) guitars, the Dual Showman Amp (Figure 4)
and the Reverb Unit (Figures 5 and 6) (Crowley 2011). As Fender biographer Richard
Smith relates, “Leo Fender never grasped the full impact of his discoveries on rock and
roll, or for that matter how the new style would change his life. He never liked rock and
roll and surely dismissed the style at first, although he had designed guitars for roots
musicians who had laid its foundations in the late 1940s” (Smith 1995, 167).
Leo Fender worked closely with Dick Dale in order to improve his guitars and
amplifiers, and in the mid 1950s, Fender gave Dale one of his Stratocaster guitars and
told him to beat it to death and give his opinions on the instrument. Through this testing
21
process, improvements were made, such as adding a five-position switch and adjustments
like repositioning the pickups. As guitar expert Tom Wheeler (1990, 76) explains:
Compared to most guitars of the day it stood out like Dolly Parton in an
Amish church…The cornerless body fit the guitarist’s rib cage and
supported the right arm in a natural playing position, and the double
cutaway permitted increased fretboard accessibility. Instead of one bridge
it had six, and the player could adjust each string individually for length,
height, and lateral positioning. The three-pickup circuitry was versatile,
and the lead pickup’s ‘crooked’ placement increased treble response. The
vibrato was a mechanical tour de force, so far ahead of its time that its
musical potential wasn’t fully explored until more than a decade later in
the hands of Jimi Hendrix.
Dick Dale also tested amplifiers and speakers for Leo Fender; he blew up and
destroyed lots of them, leading Fender to create the 100-watt Dual Showman amplifier
with two 15-inch JBL Lansing speakers (Blair, 2008). As Willett (2010, 51-52) explains,
“The convenience of having the audience, performer, amp designer, and loudspeaker
maker in the same community cannot be overstated in how it enabled rapid changes in
newer equipment. Dale’s demands for better designed amplifiers prompted Fender to
collaborate in designing and building more powerful equipment that allowed the electric
guitar to continue its rise in popularity, changing popular American tastes.”
22
Figure 1. Dick Dale and the Del-Tones
23
Figure 2. Dick Dale’s Fender Stratocaster
24
Figure 3. Fender Jaguar
Figure 4. Fender Dual Showman Amp (the speakers were housed in a separate box)
25
Figure 5. Fender Reverb Unit (front side)
Figure 6. Fender Reverb Unit (back side)
26
The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys, from Hawthorne, California, were made up of the three brothers
Brian Wilson (bass, vocals), Dennis Wilson (drums, vocals), Carl Wilson (lead guitar,
vocals), their cousin Mike Love (sax, vocals), and David Marks (rhythm guitar, vocals).
They were a vocal group that combined rich harmony vocals with surf guitar
instrumentation and became the most popular band to emerge from the surf music genre.
Brian, the group’s leader and main song writer, was fascinated with harmonies, especially
those by The Four Freshmen; “He would sit next to the hi-fi, his head cocked, carefully
picking out the different harmonies and studying how they wove into the melody line”
(Gaines 1986, 51).
Dennis, the group’s only true surfer, knew about the growing popularity of Dick
Dale and The Deltones and the success his surf instrumentals were finding in the surf
scene, so he suggested to Brian and Mike that they should write a song about surfing.
Dennis told them that every morning there was surfing news on the radio, hence was born
the lyrics: “I got up this mornin’ turned on my radio. I was checkin’ on the surfin’ scene
to see if I would go.” Dennis wrote down all the surfing terms he could think of for Brian
and Mike, and they proceeded to write the rest of the lyrics.
Surfin' is the only life

The only way for me.
Now surf, surf with me
I got up this mornin' turned on my radio

I was checkin' on the surfin' scene
To see if I would go
And when the DJ tells me that the surfin' is fine
That's when I know my baby and I will have a good time
We're going surfin'
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Surfin' is the only life the only way for me
Now surf
Surf with me
From the early morning to the middle of the night

Any time the surf is up the time is right
And when the surf is down to take its place
We'll do the Surfer's Stomp it's the latest dance craze
We're going surfin'

Now surf
Surf with me
Now the dawn is breaking and we really gotta go

But we'll be back here very soon that you better know
Yeah my surfer knots are rising and my board is losing wax
But that won't stop me baby cause you know I'm coming back
We're going surfin'

Now come on pretty baby and surf with me
The result was ‘Surfin’,’ which would be the first of a long string of hits (Burt 1986).
Their next hit song, ‘Surfin’ Safari’, was released in June 1962 on Capital Records, and
the record producer, Nik Venet, was concerned that because of the surfing theme, sales
would be confined to the West Coast. The market proved him wrong when: “The biggest
order Capital had from a single market all year was from New York City – where there
was no surfing” (Gaines 1986, 85).
Some of The Beach Boys biggest songs and their Billboard Hot 100 rankings
were: ‘Surfin’’ (#75 in March 1962); ‘Surfin’ Safari’ (#14 in October 1962); ‘Surfin’
U.S.A.’ (#3 in May 1963); and ‘Surfer Girl’ (#7 in September 1963). Some of their
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biggest hit albums and their Billboard album chart rankings were: Surfin’ Safari (32),
Surfin’ U.S.A. (2), and Surfer Girl (7) (Blair 2008).
The Beach Boys lasted much longer than most of the other surf bands and were
the only surf band that was able to compete against The Beatles when the British
Invasion hit. They were not only the most popular surf band, but they were also the most
popular American band in the 1960s.
Figure 7. The Beach Boys with Annette in the movie The Monkey’s Uncle
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Jan and Dean
Jan and Dean, made up of Jan Berry (vocals) and Dean Torrance (vocals), were
also from Los Angeles. They started out as a pop duo, but converted to surf music after
meeting the Beach Boys (Burt 1986). They became the second most popular and
successful of all the surf vocal groups. Their biggest hit song, ‘Surf City’ was actually
given to them by Brian Wilson around the same time that The Beach Boys were
recording ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.’ and made it to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in July,
1963. Jan and Dean’s other hit songs included ‘Little Old Lady From Pasadena’ (#3 in
June 1964), ‘Honolulu Lulu’ (#11 in October 1963), ‘Ride the Wild Surf’ (#16 in October
1964), and ‘Sidewalk Surfin’’ (#25 in December 1964). They also had a string of hit
record albums that made it on the Billboard album chart including, Take Linda Surfing
(71), Surf City (32), Drag City (22), Little Old Lady From Pasadena (40), and Ride the
Wild Surf (66) (Blair 2008).
30
Figure 8. Jan & Dean
31
The Surfaris
The Surfaris (Jim Fuller (lead guitar), Bob Berryhill (rhythm guitar), Pat Connolly
(bass), Ron Wilson (drums/vocals), and Jim Pash (sax)) originated from Glendora,
California (Burt 1999). They had their first recording session in December of 1962 after
only being together for four months, entering the studio to record their song ‘Surfer Joe’
based on a dream that Ron Wilson had (San Gabriel Valley Examiner 2010). While at the
recording studio, “…‘Wipe Out’ was written in about ten minutes… The song was
written because the group needed a B-side for their 45” (Mizutani 2010). They played a
twelve-bar run with Wilson adding a drum cadence during the twelve-bar breaks based
on his high school’s football field march. For effect, the song opens with breaking a
wooden roof tile (sounding like a breaking surfboard) and their manager Dale Smallin’s
hyena-inspired laugh (Burt 1999). They pressed 500 copies of the record and sold them at
school to raise money for guitar amps and both of the songs became Billboard Hot 100
hits with ‘Wipe Out’ reaching number two on the Billboard Hot 100 in August 1963
(Blair 2008) and staying in the top 100 for a total of 189 weeks (Dalley 1996).
Internationally, ‘Wipe Out’ reached number one in Australia, Germany, and Japan
(Mizutani 2010), and in 2010, Billboard ranked ‘Wipe Out’ as the second most popular
song about summer ever recorded; even though the only two words in the song are
“wipe” and “out” (Billboard 2011).
The Surfaris toured more extensively than most surf bands, even going to
Australia and New Zealand on a tour with The Beach Boys (Blair 2008). Their song
‘Karen’ was a huge hit in Japan reaching number two in the Japanese charts, which
enabled them to tour Japan as well (Dalley 1996). They won the BMI Citation of
32
Achievement Award and the Australian Record of the Year Award in 1964 for ‘Wipe
Out’ (Blair 2008).
Figure 9. The Surfaris
33
The Chantays
The Chantays (Bob Spickard (lead guitar), Brian Carman (rhythm guitar), Bob
Marshall (keyboards), Warren Waters (Bass), and Bob Welch (drums)) were from Santa
Ana, California (The Chantays Official Website 2012). Their most popular song, and
arguably the second most famous surf instrumental of all time, was ‘Pipeline’, originally
called ‘Liberty’s Whip’, and inspired by the movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
Then Spickard and Carman saw a Bruce Brown surfing film that featured the pipeline on
Hawaii’s North Shore and decided they needed to change their song title. It sold more
than a million copies and in May 1963 it reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100
(Crowley 2011).
‘Pipeline’ is one of the earliest recordings to feature the sound of the Fender
Reverb Unit (Blair 1996). Bob Spickard:
I can remember the first reverb unit I ever played through. It was Dick
Dale’s and we used it without Dick ever knowing about it. Rob Marshall’s
father was in electronics and knew someone at Fender Instruments. He
was able to borrow Dick’s reverb unit, which was in for service at the
time, for a few days. We were so impressed with this new gadget that
Brian and I took our share of the profits from a dance and each of us
bought one (Burt 1986, 49).
The Chantays was the first surf band to tour overseas, and ‘Pipeline’ was the first
surf record to make it on the British Pop Charts, reaching number 16 in June 1963. The
record also won the Australian Record of the Year Award and the BMI Citation of
Achievement Award in 1963 (Crowley 2011).
34
Figure 10. The Chantays
The Trashmen
The Trashmen (Tony Andreason (lead guitar/lead vocals), Dal Winslow (rhythm
guitar), Bob Reeds (bass), and Steve Wahrer (drums/lead vocals)) were from
Minneapolis, Minnesota (The Trashmen 1990). They started as a rock and roll band, but
changed styles in 1962. According to Andreason:
We’d heard about Dick Dale. Steve, Dal, and I went on vacation to
California in late ’62 and stayed right on the beach in Balboa. The
Chantays were playin,’ The Righteous Brothers were down there doin’
fast R&B. Dick Dale was dynamic, really outstanding, and better even
than his records. People tell me that I’m quite a surf guitarist but Dick
Dale can run miles around me! We learned all his stuff when we got back,
and nobody in Minneapolis had ever heard anything like it. The other
groups even started to copy us without even hearin’ Dick Dale (Blair
1996, 29).
35
Their biggest hit, ‘Surfin’ Bird’, was actually a combination of two songs (‘Papa Oom
Mow Mow’ and ‘The Bird is the Word’) by the doo-wop group The Rivingtons (Burt
1986). ‘Surfin’ Bird’ reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1964, and
following the release and success of ‘Surfin’ Bird’, the band extensively toured. Dal
Winslow recalls: “Prior to the record we were doing all the local ballrooms, roller rinks
etc. in the Minneapolis and surrounding area. After the record, in ’64 we branched out to
the Dakotas, Iowa and Wisconsin. We then expanded to the east coast and did a tour
down through Oklahoma, Arizona, California, Washington and Oregon. We continued
with the Midwest and did a two-week stint in Venezuela” (McCarter 2011).
Figure 11. The Trashmen
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The Pyramids
The Pyramids (Skip Mercer (lead guitar), Will Glover (rhythm guitar), Steve
Leonard (bass), Tom Pitman (sax), and Ron McMullen (drums)) from Long Beach,
California recorded ‘Penetration’, reaching number 18 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March
1964. They were known for shaving their heads and sometimes wearing Beatle wigs on
stage (Blair 2008). The shaved head and Beatle wig gimmick got them into the United
Kingdom national press under the headline ‘America’s Answer to The Beatles!’ (Burt
1986). They were known for other gimmicks like arriving to a show in a helicopter or
riding on elephants. Besides appearing on various television shows, they also appeared in
the movie Bikini Beach (1964) (Dalley 1996).
Figure 12. The Pyramids, sporting their freshly shaved heads.
37
The Astronauts
The Astronauts (Bob Demmon (lead guitar), Rich Fifield (vocals and rhythm
guitar), Dennis Lindsey (rhythm guitar), Stormy Patterson (bass), and Jim Gallagher
(drums)) were from Boulder, Colorado.
The Astronauts were a straight mid-west High School rock ‘n’ roll group
until they contacted RCA’s A&R Director, Steve Sholes. During an
interview with Sholes in Hollywood, where two of the group’s members
Bob Demmon and Jim Gallagher played him their demo, he was
interrupted by a phone-call from a distributor who informed him of the
huge sales The Beach Boys were having with Surfin’ U.S.A. He covered
the phone with his hand, leant over the desk and asked Demmon and
Gallagher if they played surf music, to which they replied ‘Yes’ (Burt
1986, 30).
They were flown in to Los Angeles, and before they had a chance to see the beach for the
first time, they were brought in to the studio to record a surf album using the
technologically superior equipment at the RCA Music Center of the World studio in
Hollywood (Chidester and Priore 2008). Although The Astronauts played surf music as
good as any Southern Californian band, they weren’t afraid of admitting that they were a
landlocked group who didn’t completely understand the surf culture, as is evident in the
following lyrics where they make fun of themselves for not understanding the surfing
lingo: “Banzai Pipeline, shootin’ the curl, ten toes over and he’s caught in a swirl/
Everybody jumps and they point and shout, I wish I knew what they were talkin’ about.”
Their most successful song was ‘Baja’, written by Duane Eddy’s gifted song
writer, Lee Hazlewood (Dalley 1997). ‘Baja’ reached number 94 on the Billboard Hot
100 in July 1963 while their album Surfin’ With The Astronauts reached number 61 on
the Billboard album chart (Blair 2008). They toured throughout the Midwest, playing in
Nebraska, Iowa, Colorado, and North Dakota and also played sold-out shows in Japan.
38
They appeared in four movies: Surf Party (1964), Wild on the Beach (1965), Out of Sight
(1966), and Wild Wild Winter (1966) (Dalley 1996).
Figure 13. The Astronauts in a photo shoot for Fender.
Movies
In the late 1950s and early 1960s the popularity of the warm and sandy beach
culture grew, and one of the factors involved with this were movies with a major beach
theme. One of the first movies that featured this theme was Gidget in 1959. The movie is
about a young girl, Gidget (played by Sandra Dee), who discovers surfing and love in the
Southern California beach town of Malibu. According to Paul Johnson, the rhythm
guitarist of The Belairs, “Although the plot [of Gidget] was corny, the movie showed the
surfer as a romantic character that appealed to teenagers looking for their identity”
39
(Chidester and Priore 2008, 111). “…Gidget explosively popularized an edge-dwelling
sport enjoyed by a rugged and eccentric few and changed it (many say for the worse)
forever…” (Rensin 2008, 1-2). Malibu quickly became commercialized with people
going there to write about it and publicize it. According to surfer Greg Noll: “The whole
Hollywood bullshit deal just brought more assholes over the hill from the Valley. If
you’re from the Valley, don’t take offense, but this is basically what the beach guys
thought” (Rensin 2008, 107). The success of Gidget led to an explosion of people going
to the beach and trying the sport of surfing themselves, and created people far from the
beach to romanticize in the lifestyle. “Kids in Kansas bolted surfboards to the tops of
their cars in homage to the imagined surf lifestyle” (Stecyk 2001, 59).
In 1963, American International Pictures released Beach Party, starring Annette
Funicello and Frankie Avalon, and featuring Dick Dale and His Del-Tones. The movie
grossed $3.5 million, setting box office records across America (Booth 1996). Real
Californian surfers attending the premiere of Beach Party were less than pleased, and at a
theatre in Malibu, legendary surfer Miki Dora released a jar of moths that covered the
screen (Chidester and Priore 2008). In contrast to this was Annette Funicello’s
description of the Beach Party philosophy, “I think they portrayed everybody’s dream of
what they would like their summer vacation to be, especially those kids who didn’t live
near water. Their big dream was to come out to Malibu Beach and to surf and dance on
the sand, and to have weenie roasts every night. It also showed you that you could have
fun without using vulgar language and without explicit sex scenes” (Burt 1986, 98).
American International Pictures followed the box office success of Beach Party with a
string of other Frankie and Annette beach movies including Muscle Beach Party (1964),
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also featuring Dick Dale and His Del-Tones; Bikini Beach (1964), featuring The
Pyramids and The Excitors; Beach Blanket Bingo (1964), featuring The Hondells; and
How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965), featuring The Kingsman and an appearance by Brian
Wilson of the Beach Boys.
The success of Gidget and the American International Pictures feel-good beach-
themed movies led other motion picture companies to jump onto the bandwagon, and in a
very short amount of time there were many beach-themed movies with surf music as a
soundtrack released throughout the U.S. These included Twentieth Century-Fox’s Surf
Party (1964), featuring The Astronauts and The Routers; Columbia Pictures Ride the
Wild Surf (1964), with music by Jan and Dean; and Paramount Picture’s The Girls on the
Beach (1965), featuring The Beach Boys and The Crickets.
Helping prove that the allure of the surfing culture had spread to places as far
away from the beach as possible was Bruce Brown’s surfing documentary, The Endless
Summer. Filmed in 1964, Brown asked several Hollywood and New York City
companies to distribute the movie; they all declined, arguing that it would do a horrible
box office in any city that was further than 10 miles from the beach. In response, Brown
screened his own film for two weeks in Wichita, Kansas, in the middle of winter. It had a
full house each night and grossed more than either The Great Race or My Fair Lady, the
academy award winner for best picture, at the Kansas theatre. Brown then sold the film
worldwide and it was dubbed by Newsweek as one of the best ten films of 1964 (Ormrod
2005). Brown, contemplating the film’s appeal to a mass audience, said, “I don’t
know…I’ve run into so many people who saw The Endless Summer particularly back
41
east, and said it had some effect on them. But a lot of ‘em, they didn’t surf, and they
never did surf. It’s always been a mystery to me” (Kampion 1998, 96).
Venues
The early surf bands in Southern California mostly played shows at high schools,
civic auditoriums, National Guard Armories, and meeting halls that were sanctioned for
dances (Blair 2008). Bob Berryhill recalls, “There weren’t any clubs in those days, like
The Troubador or places like that. You had to play at the high schools” (McCarter 2011).
The first surf music night club was the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, California. It sat
dormant for years until Dick Dale started renting it out in the summer of 1961. The first
night that Dick Dale played there, fewer than 40 kids attended; therefore, to pick up
business, he asked Newport High School if his band could give a music demonstration to
the students. It was agreed they would play “nice music” that would make for
“wholesome dances.” They performed big band tunes until the last 15 minutes, when he
told the audience that they were going to play at the Rendezvous Ballroom that night.
They then played a short set of wild rock ‘n’ roll instrumentals, and within three months
of the Newport High School show, they were packing the Rendezvous Ballroom with
over 4,000 kids a night to their shows (Chidester and Priore 2008).
Some of the other venues in Southern California included Harmony Park
Ballroom in Anaheim, which in early 1962, is where Dick Dale and His Deltones started
playing regularly in response to a rent increase by the Rendezvous Ballroom. Another
popular venue was the Retail Clerk’s Hall in Buena Park, whose house band was the
well-known surf band Eddie & The Showmen; it also featured gigs by such surf legends
42
as The Ventures, The Beach Boys, The Surfaris, The Lively Ones, and The Chantays.
Other venues included the Belair Club, later renamed to Reb Foster’s Revelaire Club;
The Cinnamon Cinder in Studio City, that was opened by KFWB disc jockey Bob
Eubanks; The Peppermint Stick on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, that booked
such acts as The Beach Boys, Jan & Dean, The Surfaris, and The Chantays; The
Peppermint West on Cahuenga whose house band was The Standells; and The
Peppermint Lounge in Long Beach’s Nu-Pike amusement park, whose houseband was
The Illusions. Apparently The Peppermint Lounge in New York City, which is where
The Twist hit the big time in 1961, had some influence on club owners when it was time
for them to give their venues a name (Chidester and Priore 2008).
Besides venues that hosted surf music shows, there were surf music events, the
most notable of which took place during surf music’s peak year of 1963. The Deauville
Castle Club in Santa Monica, California, held a three-day event in March called Surf
Battle, a competition between 18 surf bands with The Rhythm Kings being the winner.
There was the Surf Fair at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Santa Monica,
California, headlined by The Surfaris, The Beach Boys, and The New Dimensions and
also the Teen-Age Fair of 1963, at the Pickwick Recreation Center in Burbank,
California. Bands included Dick Dale and His Deltones, The Beach Boys, and The New
Dimensions. Besides surf bands, the fair included indie surf films by filmmaker Walt
Phillips, booths filled with surf industry entrepreneurs, and actors from the Beach Party
movies signing autographs and posing for pictures (Chidester and Priore 2008).
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Figure 14. The Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, California.
Figure 15. Flyer promoting Dick Dale at The Rendezvous Ballroom.
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Figure 16. The Deauville Castle Club in Santa Monica, California.
Figure 17. Flyer promoting “Surf Battle” at The Deauville Castle Club.
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Methodology
The methodology was designed to analyze the spatial and temporal dynamics of
surf music at the national level during its peak years from 1961-1966. Using top chart
favorites from radio stations across the country, a selection of ten hit songs that are
definitive as surf music have been analyzed to understand how successful this form of
music was in various parts of the country compared to other parts of the country. For
example, did surf music always fare better on radio charts in Southern California than the
rest of the country? Did a distance decay effect occur where a song fared worse the
further away it was from Southern California? Were surf songs constantly a bigger hit in
certain cities regardless of how far away they were from Southern California, or did a
seemingly random result occur? Also analyzed were dates and locations of vinyl record
releases of surf music to understand the shift in popularity of surf music both temporally
and spatially during the different years from 1962-1966. In other words, which years, and
specifically which months, had the most record releases? Furthermore, where was the
location of these record releases and how did the mean location change over time? And to
better understand the spatial and temporal dynamics of surf music, interviews were
conducted with musicians that were, and still are, in the most popular surf bands.
Surf Band Record Releases
My first step was to meticulously go through The Illustrated Discography of Surf
Music (Blair 2008), and find data that met two requirements: the band’s location, and the
month and year of their record releases. The data that met these requirements (n=363),
were then inputted into Excel with their latitude and longitude coordinates.
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A bar chart with five columns (one for each year of the study) was constructed to
reveal how the volume of surf music releases varied over the five-year time span. Next,
to see if there was a seasonal trend in the release of surf music, such as more releases
during the summer months when teenagers were active at the beach and fewer releases
during the winter months when the weather was not conducive to beach activities, a bar
chart for each year was produced. The charts for the individual years each have columns,
one for each month, so they could be compared to each other and see if they shared
similarities to each other.
To understand the direction and speed of surf music’s diffusion in the contiguous
United States, the mean latitude and longitude coordinates for different intervals of time
were calculated: the entire five years of the study, each year of the study, and every six
months of the study. This data was then mapped into ArcMap.
Radio Station Surveys
Ten songs were chosen from the top hit surveys put out by radio stations across
the United States and Canada. Survey data is being analyzed for Canadian cities because
many of those cities are close to the international border, which might produce interesting
results. Then the song’s radio station rankings were mapped to reveal what ranking that
song had in the various cities across the United States and Canada. The purpose was not
to compare songs to see which one did better or worse than the other, for that the
Billboard Hot 100 would be much more accurate. But rather, the purpose was to get an
understanding of how each release, or re-release, fared in the various cities that data was
available. An example is ‘Let’s Go Trippin’’ (released September 1961) by Dick Dale &
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His Del-Tones. The song ranked number four in Los Angeles, California; 18 in San
Francisco, California; 19 in Chicago, Illinois; 23 in Bakersfield, California; 29 in both
Toronto, Ontario and New Haven, Connecticut; and 44 in both Vancouver, British
Columbia and Denver, Colorado. This data was mapped so that the results can more
easily be visualized, and patterns, if any, could be found.
To be unbiased as possible while choosing the ten songs, three criterions were
used. The first criterion was simple and straight forward: each song had to have made it
into the Billboard Hot 100. This helped guarantee that the sample size of cities would be
large enough to produce results that would be more accurate than using songs that did not
make it into the Billboard Hot 100, because songs that were in the top 100 generally, if
not always, were played in more locations throughout the country. The second criterion
was that no more than one song from any one band would be used; there were many surf
bands (The Beach Boys, Jan & Dean, The Marketts, The Surfaris, The Trashmen, and
The Ventures) that had more than one song that placed in the Billboard Hot 100. By
limiting it to only one song per band, it helped ensure that the overall results would
reflect a spatial trend in surf music’s popularity in general, rather than be skewed by the
popularity of any one band in particular. The third criterion was used to address the
temporal spatial shifts of popularity that occurred between surf music’s beginnings in
1961, and 1966 when surf music declined due to the British Invasion. To achieve this, the
first song that was used, ‘Let’s Go Trippin’’ by Dick Dale & The Del-Tones, was chosen
because it was the first surf song that made it into the Billboard Hot 100. That made it a
natural starting point, with a release date of September 1961. Then it was decided to
choose a song that was released every six months after that; however, that proved to be
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impossible because there wasn’t always a surf song that was released exactly every six
months that made it into the Billboard Hot 100 and/or wasn’t by a band that was already
used. Therefore, a maximum give-or-take two month window was used when necessary.
The ninth song that was used was ‘I Live for the Sun’ by The Sunrays, released in June
1965. After that release, it would be another 13 months before another surf song made it
onto the Billboard Hot 100. That song, which is the tenth song used, was actually a re-
release of ‘Wipe Out’ by The Surfaris (it was originally released in April 1963). This was
the only time when an exception to the maximum give-or-take two month window was
used, because otherwise, ‘I Live for the Sun’ (June 1965) would have been the last song,
and this study would be more complete if 1966 was included. No more surf songs made it
into the Billboard Hot 100 after 1966, so the re-release of ‘Wipe Out’ is an appropriate
ending spot.
The ten songs chosen for this cartographic adventure were ‘Let’s Go Trippin’’ by
Dick Dale & His Del-Tones (released September 1961); ‘Surfer’s Stomp’ by The
Marketts (released January 1962); ‘Surfin’ Safari’ by The Beach Boys (released June
1962); ‘Pipeline’ by The Chantays (released January 1963); ‘Honolulu Lulu’ by Jan &
Dean (released August 1963); ‘Bird Dance Beat’ by The Trashmen (released January
1964); ‘Walk Don’t Run ‘64’ by The Ventures (released July 1964); ‘New York’s a
Lonely Town’ by The Tradewinds (released January 1965); ‘I Live for the Sun’ by The
Sunrays (released June 1965); and ‘Wipe Out’ by The Surfaris (re-released July 1966).
This data was retrieved from ARSA – The Airheads Radio Survey Archive, which
is an online database that houses radio surveys that have been preserved and uploaded by
radio survey collectors. There are two limitations to this information. First, not every
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radio station is in the database. Secondly, and more importantly, is that for the many
radio stations that are in the database, not every single week by any particular radio
station is in the database. This creates gaps in the data, causing some cities to be listed on
some of the maps, but not on others. It also means that circumstances are created where,
for example, a song might be listed on a city’s survey for a couple of weeks, then there is
a no-data gap for a couple of weeks, then it’s back on the survey for a couple of weeks.
There is no way of knowing for certain how that song fared during the no-data gap.
However, there are enough radio stations and weeks of surveys that spatial-temporal
observations and conclusions of academic worth can be made.
Interviews
To get a clearer understanding of the forces underlying the spatial dynamics of
surf music from 1961-1966, two interviews were conducted. Both interviews were with
musicians that were highly successful and influential during the height of the surf music
craze: Dal Winslow of The Trashmen, a band from Minneapolis, Minnesota and most
famous for the classics ‘Surfin’ Bird’ and ‘Bird Dance Beat’; and Bob Berryhill of The
Surfaris, a band from Glendora, California and most famous for the classics ‘Wipe Out’
and ‘Surfer Joe’. These firsthand accounts provided valuable insights on such topics as to
how and why surf music spread from Southern California to other parts of the country,
especially the Midwest, and how well it was received; the perception of, and participation
in, the surf culture and its intertwined surf music scene; the touring that took place, as
well as the venues available to play at, which helped connect band performance and
sound with its audience; pre-surf music influences; and the importance of the Fender
instruments and equipment that helped shape the surf sound, especially the Fender 100-
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Watt Dual Showman Amp, which provided the necessary volume to play shows in large
venues.
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Results
Of the 363 record releases by surf bands for the five-year interval 1962-1966,
53% (193) of them were released in 1963 (Figure 18).
Figure 18. Number of releases by surf bands from 1962-1966.
Each year after 1963, the releases were reduced by more than half of that of the
previous year. 1963 was by far surf music’s most successful as far as output is concerned.
In 1962, there was relatively very little production of the music style, then it erupted in
1963, and within just two years it was producing less than it did in 1962.
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Since surf music revolves around the ideal California “fun in the sun” image, bar
charts were constructed to test whether or not the time of the year had an impact on the
volume of releases (Figure 19). The output in 1962 soared in June compared to its
previous months of that year, and then quickly decreased in July. Then in the later
months of 1962, it rose again until it finally peaked in December, one of the coldest
months of the year. The peaking in December however could be attributed to it being
closer to 1963 than the months preceding it, as well as records being released in time for
Christmas and Hanukah.
Figure 19. Number of releases per month for 1962.
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In 1963, Figure 20 shows that April (Spring Break) was the busiest month of that
year, and also the busiest during the five-year study. In the summer months through
August, it remained strong, and then dipped down in September and bounced back up in
October.
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Figure 21 indicates that April was the lowest producing month for 1964, and
Figure 22 shows that it was the second lowest producing month for 1965. In Figure 23, it
becomes apparent that surf music had run its course in popular American culture.
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In Figure 24, we see that when all the surf music releases in the study for the five
year period are mapped, the mean location is in northwest Arizona as it is slightly pulled
away from Orange County, California to the northeast mainly from bands releasing music
in the Midwest section of the United States. As Figure 18 illustrates, most of the releases
occurred during 1963 and 1964. Since the other years did not produce a significant
amount, the overall diffusion route and speed for the five years can best be visualized by
mapping the location mean at one year intervals (Figure 25), while the location means at
six month intervals (Figure 26) helps one understand the details of the diffusion during
the busier years of 1963 and 1964. In Figure 26, the 1 and 2 separated from the year by a
dash denotes whether that particular mean is for the first half (1), or second half (2), of
that year.
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From 1962-1964, as illustrated in Figure 25, the location mean moves steadily
toward the northeast, then in 1965 it takes a u-turn and back tracts toward the direction
where it originated (Orange County, California), and then heads east during 1966. In
Figure 26, we can take a more detailed look at the mean location during 1963 and 1964.
From the shorter interval of six months, it becomes apparent that the largest jump by far
in spatial mean during those two relatively busy years occurred during the second half of
1963. It’s also interesting to note that the first half of 1964 and second half of 1964 have
almost identical spatial means.
The Midwest and East took to surf music more than the South, which could be
merely explained away by migration patterns. Similarly, Zion (1987) explains that in
Australia, before the British Invasion, they followed the trends of the United States which
was “the icon of pop music and fashion.” But Australians were tuned into the Beatles
months before they took hold of the American public. Zion argues that they took to the
Beatles before the United States because of the patterns of British immigration to
Australia, where between 1954 and 1966, almost a quarter of a million British
immigrants arrived in Australia, and they were more closely aligned with British groups
than with American groups. But another factor that shouldn’t be overlooked is whether or
not the region that is adopting (or not adopting) a musical style is already a hearth of a
strongly-rooted musical style(s). The South was already home to Memphis and Nashville
and was a musical hearth to rock, country, blues, and jazz.
Many spatial-temporal observations can be made while examining the radio
station surveys. It is not at all surprising that surf music started out the strongest in
Southern California and remained relatively strong there throughout the years that were
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studied. ‘Let’s Go Trippin’’ by Dick Dale & His Del-Tones, released in September 1961,
ranked number four in Los Angeles, which was just a short drive away from where they
would regularly perform at The Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, California. That was
significantly better than the next highest rating for that song, which was San Francisco at
number 18.
In January 1962, ‘Surfer’s Stomp’ by The Marketts was ranked number two in
Los Angeles, while the next highest was again San Francisco, which closed the gap at
number seven. The next highest ranking city outside of Southern California was St Louis
at number 21. Just five months later in June 1962, ‘Surfin Safari’ was released by The
Beach Boys. While this song was hot in California, ranking number two in both San
Diego and San Francisco and number four in San Bernardino, it was received almost as
well in several other cities in the United States, including Buffalo, New York at number
one; Dallas, Texas at number three; and at number five in the following five cities:
Tucson, Arizona; Chicago, Illinois; Dayton, Ohio; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Springfield,
Massachusetts. As the maps illustrate, from that time on, surf music’s top performing
songs would be ranked in several locations throughout the country just as well as in
Southern California. This suggests that although the surf sound was born in Orange
County, it only took about one year before some of the other portions of the country were
equally accepting the music style, and for some of the songs, more so. Regarding how the
popularity of surf music in Southern California compared with surf music’s popularity in
other places, Dal Winslow recalls one of The Trashmen’s tours that took them to
Southern California:
We were a little apprehensive about playing in the home of surf music…

We talked to the band that had played there the night before and they said
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surf music was dead. You can imagine how this went over with us. We
decided the hell with it and we would do our normal gig. Well the crowd
went bananas and we ended up doing several encores. After the gig we
talked to some fans and they said the surf bands out there at that time
sucked and that was why they were failing. They said we added a special
and unique sound that they had not heard before (McCarter 2011).
The Midwest, which is about as far as you can get from actual surfing, received
surf music quite well. According to Dal Winslow, “I think it was just something different
that the fans were not familiar with. They had seen the surf movies and heard the Beach
Boys but very few were aware of Dick Dale and the other great surf groups out of
California” (McCarter 2011). Bob Berryhill recalls Easter Week, now known as Spring
Break except that everybody had it off during the same week, “We were playing music at
the beach, and they would hear the music and then they would all go home. These people
came from the Midwest, a lot of them, they would go back home and they would bring
the music back with them.” Berryhill also recalls that:
When ‘Wipe Out’ was a hit, people were driving around in Ohio with
surfboards on racks on top of their cars. There’s no surf in Ohio, but you
have pictures of that stuff. People would be doing stuff like that because
they wanted to be cool and be part of the genre. So it sort of spread that
way, by people seeing it on television, movies, and then coming to the
beach and wanting to be part of the scene (McCarter 2011).
This strongly suggests that surf music’s popularity in a region had little to do with
whether or not the people of that region actively participated in the sport, but had more to
do with a combination of loving the way the music sounded, and wanting to be a part of
this emerging and exciting scene.
Another region that received surf music well was the Northeast. It is interesting to
note that Buffalo, New York almost always had a significantly better rating than Toronto,
Ontario, which is only approximately 60 miles apart. ‘Surfin’ Safari’ ranked number one
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in Buffalo and 53 in Toronto. ‘Pipeline’ was a less dramatic difference with number two
in Buffalo and nine in Toronto. ‘Honolulu Lulu’ was number ten in Buffalo and 28 in
Toronto. ‘Walk Don’t Run ‘64’ was number eight in Buffalo and 26 in Toronto. And ‘I
Live for the Sun’ was number ten in Buffalo and 45 in Toronto. Although 60 miles apart
is not much, the cultural differences between the two places created a dramatic difference
between the receptivity of surf music. They are not only separated by a Great Lake, but
by an international border, which creates a difference in government rules, product
availability, and a cultural production machine operating south of the international border
and lacking north of the border. Toronto has grown to become one of the top financial
centers of the world and could actually be compared closer to New York, New York than
to Buffalo. There were two exceptions where Toronto scored higher than Buffalo. The
first is ‘Bird Dance Beat’ which ranked number 30 in Buffalo and 21 in Toronto. This
shift could be due to the fact that The Trashmen, from Minneapolis, Minnesota did some
touring in Canada, which would have helped popularize the band and its songs. The other
exception is the re-release of ‘Wipe Out’ where it ranked number two in Toronto and 21
in Buffalo, which could be due to the fact that the song was first released in 1963, so by
the time the re-release came out it had already been a huge hit for three years.
The rankings for New York, New York are also interesting to note because that
city did not accept surf music nearly as well as other cities that were close by in the New
England states, which could partly be due to ethnicity and identity. ‘Pipeline’ ranked
number 30 in New York, while it was number seven in New Haven, Connecticut; number
eight in Hartford, Connecticut; and number 24 in Springfield, Massachusetts. ‘Walk
Don’t Run ‘64’ ranked number 31 in New York, while it was number eleven in
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Providence, Rhode Island; 17 in Hartford; and 23 in Springfield. ‘New York’s a Lonely
Town’ was number 39 in New York, while it was number eight in Providence; 15 in
Springfield; 33 in Hartford; and 36 in New Haven. ‘I Live for the Sun’ ranked number 39
in New York and nine in Hartford. And the re-release of ‘Wipe Out’ was number 15 in
New York while it was number five in both New Haven and Hartford; six in Springfield;
seven in Boston, Massachusetts; and only 24 in Keene, Vermont.
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Conclusions
Surf music started in Orange County, California in 1961 and spread quickly to the
rest of the United States. Its sound was something new, unique, and interesting. It was
perceived as something cool, whether you surfed or not, a style that could and was
enjoyed by people in places that were as far removed from surfing spots as possible.
Besides California, it was well received in the Midwest and Northeast. Mediums that
helped popularize the surf culture and the music that served as its soundtrack included
movies, television, and print. These mediums also sparked vacations to Southern
California’s beaches which helped surf music’s popularity via first-hand contact with the
surf culture and its music.
Technological innovations, such as using foam for surfboards, helped popularize
and accessibilize surf culture by making surfboards more affordable, lighter, and easier to
maneuver. The collaboration that took place between Dick Dale and Leo Fender resulted
in the creation of the Dual Showman Amp, which was finally a guitar amplifier that could
produce the volume necessary to tap through a drum set playing in a large auditorium and
was loud enough for the dancing audience to “feel” the energy of the music. Furthermore,
the Reverb Unit, which created a “wet sound,” and the Stratocaster and Jaguar guitars
that Fender produced, were widely utilized by surf musicians and it helped create a surf
sound that was unique and interesting.
The 1959 release of Gidget sensationalized surfing on the beaches of Southern
California and it created an explosion in the sport. Numerous beach-themed movies
followed in Gidget’s footsteps and helped bring the beach and its rapidly growing culture
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to every corner of the United States and everywhere in-between. For some people that
lived too far away from the beach to go surfing, they could still participate in the ideal
lifestyle by bolting surfboards to the tops of their cars. And for the many people that felt
that that was a bit too extreme, they could still participate through beach-themed movies;
fashion; dance; and most notably, through music. As the surfing documentary Endless
Summer proved through its box office success in cities far removed from the beach,
people didn’t need to be surfers to enjoy watching other people surf and the seemingly
carefree lifestyle that the surfers led. In the same way, people didn’t need to be surfers to
enjoy listening and dancing to surf music; they also didn’t need to be surfers to play surf
music in a band, as illustrated by the most successful surf band of all time, The Beach
Boys, where four out of five of the members did not surf.
According to the release dates from the surf records in the study, a little bit more
than half of the surf music in the five-year period from 1962-1966 were released in 1963,
making that the peak year in surf music production, which is arguably the same year as
surf music’s peak in popularity. Taking a closer look at the volume of surf music releases
included in the study (n=363), it was found that 10% (38) were from 1962; 53% (193)
from 1963; 24% (88) from 1964; 8% (29) from 1965; and only 4% (15) from 1966. So
since the genre’s creation in 1961 by its main architect Dick Dale, it only took two years
to reach its peak in productivity in 1963; then the following year of 1964, its productivity
decreased by more than half, and then again decreased by more than half in 1965, and
again nearly half in 1966.
While the majority of surf music was being released by bands from Southern
California, the mean location of surf music releases in the study was slowly shifting
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towards the east. According to the yearly location means, in 1962, it was in Orange
County; by 1963, it reached the northwest portion of Arizona; by 1964, it had reached the
southeast corner of Utah; in 1965, it receded a little ways back to the northeast part of
Arizona; and in 1966, it was in the northern part of New Mexico. According to the six-
month location means, a large shift occurred between the first half of 1963 and the
second half of 1963, where it shifted approximately 340 miles from Southern California
to Northern Arizona. There was virtually no difference between location means between
the first half of 1964 and the second half of 1964, where it stayed in the southeast corner
of Utah. It is interesting to note that the large shift in location mean that took place in-
between the first half of 1963 and the second half of 1963 coincides with the most
popular year for surf music. In other words, as the releases in surf music increased, the
percentage of that surf music being released outside of Southern California also
increased. The majority of the music was still being released in Southern California, but a
shift was taking place, and the quicker the popularity, the more dramatic the shift. With
the slowing of releases in 1964, the shift came to a standstill where the location mean
stood still in the southeast corner of Utah during both the first half and the second half of
1964.
When ‘Let’s Go Trippin’’ was released by Dick Dale & His Deltones in
September 1961, it became the first surf song to make it onto the Billboard Hot 100.
According to top chart favorites from radio stations, the song fared noticeably better in
Los Angeles with a ranking of number four. A distance decay effect took place where the
song ranked 18 in San Francisco, California; 19 in Chicago, Illinois; 29 in Toronto,
Ontario; 29 in New Haven, Connecticut; and 44 in Vancouver, British Columbia. Four
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months later in January 1962, ‘Surfer’s Stomp’ by The Marketts was released. A similar
distance decay effect took place where it by far ranked the best in Los Angeles at number
two; followed by San Francisco at number seven. Going north it was 23 in Boise, Idaho
and 25 in Vancouver, British Columbia. Traveling east, it ranked 21 in St Louis,
Missouri; 33 in Chicago; 39 in Springfield, Massachusetts; and 44 in Lakeland, Florida.
When ‘Surfin’ Safari’ was released by The Beach Boys in June 1962, the distance a city
was from Los Angeles no longer affected how high of a ranking the song did - the
distance decay effect vanished and surf songs were as big of a hit or bigger in cities
thousands of miles away from the waves of Orange County. Culture played a part in its
receptivity, as can be seen by how much better it was received in Buffalo, New York
versus 60 miles away in Toronto, Ontario, and how much less received it was in New
York, New York versus the smaller and less bustling cities nearby in Connecticut and
Massachusetts.
Ford (1971, 455) wrote, “Music has certainly played a very big part in the images
many people have of such places as New Orleans and Liverpool, and it would be
interesting to know what impact the ‘California surf’ sound of the early 1960s had on the
migration of young people to that state.” Surf music definitely played a big part on
people’s perception of what Southern California was like, and while surf music’s
influence on migration may still be unknown, we now have a clearer understanding of
surf music’s spatial and temporal aspects.
While many music styles tend to diffuse from the periphery to the core, surf
music contradicts this by diffusing from the core (Southern California) to the periphery
(Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, etc…). Unlike many other styles of music, such as
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jazz and blues that diffused relatively slowly, surf music diffused relatively quickly.
Could it be that the reason it was accepted relatively quickly across the United States is
that it did originate from the core, whereas jazz and blues, both from the South,
originated from the periphery? This would have placed surf music on the center stage of
American culture from the beginning, whereas jazz and blues existed and evolved for
decades before being accepted in the core of American culture. Or is it because
technological advancements helped speed the process of sharing cultural ideas?
Advancements and popularity in movies, television, radio, and transportation/traveling
could help spread ideas much quicker in the early 1960s compared to fifty years earlier,
enabling shifts in national taste to occur practically overnight. Furthermore, is the
quickness that surf music faded from popularity directly related to the quickness that it
climbed to popularity? Did the same technological advancements that helped speed up its
national popularity, help replace it with the British invasion groups?
1963 and 1964 were by far the busiest years for surf music, with 77% of the vinyl
in the study being released during those two years, but it would not be long before the
genre faded away. In 1964, The Beach Boys and The Surfaris had a successful tour in
Australia and in 1965 it was supposed to be The Hondells turn to play their surf music
down under. The Hondells were booked for the Australian Surfside ’65 Tour which was
due to start in January 1965, but in November 1964, the Australian promoters decided to
cancel it because they realized that surf music wasn’t as popular as the emerging British
invasion. The tour was reinvented for the times and renamed to The Big Beat Show, and
featured the British rockers, The Rolling Stones (Burt 1986). And in June 1967, The
Beach Boys cancelled their appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival because Brian
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Wilson thought they were out of step with the times and would be ridiculed (Wood
1995). According to John Zambetti of The Malibooz, “With the popularity of the Beatles
and Bob Dylan and psychedelia, interest in surf music kind of fell by the wayside.
Everyone just sort of melded into psychedelic-rock bands…We all changed our names
and sort of moved on from what we had been doing before with surf music” (Chidester
and Priore 2008, 193).
Although surf music faded away in the mid 1960s in the wake of the British
Invasion groups, it never completely died. Surf music revivals have occurred over the
decades and numerous surf bands have emerged as a result. Besides new bands emerging,
several of the bands from the early 1960s still perform to this day including Dick Dale,
The Beach Boys, The Surfaris, The Chantays, and The Trashmen. As Dal Winslow
relates in 2011: “Over the past three years we have done several tours in Europe…No
surf but the music is really well received. There are several surf groups and surf festivals
that occur in the middle of Spain, France, and Italy…Some call it Surf/Punk or Garage,
but it’s still the same old stuff…” (McCarter 2011). With or without surf, the music that
was born from that culture will continue to be performed and enjoyed by audiences
around the world. As Blair (1996, 11) succinctly notes: “Popular music has never
captured the same sense of youthful vitality and spirit, the celebration of life, quite the
way that surf music did. Certainly the innocence of the music, accompanied by its
inherent fun-in-the-sun message, was one of its most endearing qualities.”
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Spatial Analysis of Surf Music, 1961-1966 (McCarter, 2010)

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California State University, Northridge

A Spatial Analysis of Surf Music: 1961-1966

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

For the degree of Master of Arts in Geography,

David Frank McCarter

Dr. Steve Graves Date

Dr. Ron Davidson Date

Dr. James Craine, Chair Date

California State University, Northridge

Figure 1. Dick Dale and The Del-Tones 23

Figure 2. Dick Dale’s Fender Stratocaster 24

Figure 3. Fender Jaguar 25

Figure 4. Fender Dual Showman Amp 25

Figure 5. Fender Reverb Unit (front side) 26

Figure 6. Fender Reverb Unit (back side) 26

Figure 7. The Beach Boys 29

Figure 8. Jan and Dean 31

Figure 9. The Surfaris 33

Figure 10. The Chantays 35

Figure 11. The Trashmen 36

Figure 12. The Pyramids 37

Figure 13. The Astronauts 39

Figure 14. The Rendezvous Ballroom 44

Figure 15. Flyer promoting Dick Dale at The Rendezvous Ballroom 44

Figure 16. The Deauville Castle Club 45

Figure 18. Number of releases by surf bands from 1962-1966 52

Figure 19. Number of releases per month for 1962 53

Figure 20. Number of releases per month for 1963 54

Figure 21. Number of releases per month for 1964 55

Figure 22. Number of releases per month for 1965 55

Figure 23. Number of releases per month for 1966 56

Figure 24. Surf music releases from 1962-1966 57

Figure 25. Location mean for each year from 1962-1966 58

Figure 26. Location mean at six-month intervals 59

Figure 27. Let’s Go Trippin’ 65

Figure 28. Surfer’s Stomp 66

Figure 29. Surfin’ Safari 67

Figure 30. Pipeline 68

Figure 31. Honolulu Lulu 69

Figure 32. Bird Dance Beat 70

Figure 33. Walk Don’t Run ’64 71

Figure 35. I Live for the Sun 73

Figure 36. Wipe Out 74

A Spatial Analysis of Surf Music: 1961-1966

David Frank McCarter

Master of Arts in Geography, GIS Program

most popular surf bands.

objectification. However, these reasons are not sufficient enough by themselves to

explain the highly successful diffusion of surf music.

I believe other reasons contributed to this diffusion. The allure created by

and the Jaguar.

instrumental… characterized by heavy staccato picking on a Fender Stratocaster guitar,

U.S.A.’, ‘Pipeline’, and ‘I Live for the Sun’.

youth taking too many drugs, protests, and race riots.

be played in front of Texas teenagers (Chidester and Priore 2008).