DICK DALE, KING OF THE SURF GUITAR: Rock legend Dick Dale has died at age 81.
The Daily Telegraph comments on Dale’s influence:
Dick Dale, who has died aged 81, was the progenitor of what become known in the 1960s as “surf music”, a sub-genre of pop whose most famous exponents were the Beach Boys; he belatedly achieved wider recognition when Quentin Tarantino used his track Misirlou as the opening theme to one of the key films of the 1990s, Pulp Fiction.
Although mainstream success did not come to him until late in his career, it could be argued that Dale did more than many better-known guitarists to shape the direction of rock music. His influence lay not so much in what he liked to play, which never gained more than local popularity in his youth, as in the style of his attack.
The style of his attack — indeed. In his tune “Third Stone from the Sun,” Jimi Hendrix said “You’ll never hear surf music again.” Thing is, that’s an inside joke. Dale’s style influenced Hendrix and Hendrix’s style of attack.
But surf music? As the BBC report says, it has Greek folk music roots and influences. Cultural appropriation scream the Social Justice Warriors!!! Hey, SJWs, there are only 12 notes in the tempered scale. Temper down — learn sumthin’.
“When I got that feeling from surfing,” he [Dale] told the writer Barney Hoskyns, “the white water coming over my head was the high notes going dikidikidiki, and then the dungundungun on the bottom was the waves, and I started double-picking faster and faster, like a locomotive, to feel the power of the waves.”
Cool. Greek and Eastern European music morphs into Southern California surf rock.
Only in America.
UPDATE: Dick Dale plays Pipeline then ad libs. Dick Dale and Stevie Ray Vaughn play Pipeline. If you’re a Baby Boomer and suffer from tinnitus, check this out. Dale, Leo Fender and James B. Lansing challenged your ears.
UPDATE UPDATE: Just discovered this. August 4, 2017.