http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080413/LIFE/804130303/1005/LIFEBeach Boys' sandy path first trod by '50s surf kings
Thank Ventures, Del-Tones for style's success
Don't call the Beach Boys' iconic sun-and-waves hits surf music.
"I never made real surf music, because the real surf music was one of the things that got me interested in surfing," said Bruce Johnston, whose first recording with the band was "California Girls." "I'm not one of the real guys."
The "real guys" Johnston refers to are the ones who started and inspired the first wave of instrumental surf music, such as Dick Dale and His Del-Tones and The Ventures. But even they were reluctantly labeled as surf musicians.
"It was titled surf music afterwards because I was surfing," Dale said. "They could have called me Tarzan of the jungle, because I had 40 different species of animals, lions and tigers and apes and gorillas and hawks and eagles, so when my elephants would scream or my mountain lion would scream for me, going 'Waaaooh!' I would make that sound on my guitar. So it had nothing to do with surfing."
The Ventures' first hit, "Walk, Don't Run," has often been called one of the first surf-style tracks, though the Tacoma, Wash., band's two founding members were construction workers doing heavy lifting, not surfers. "We were looking for something no heavier than a guitar to pick up, and we were hoping for just local success," founder Don Wilson said.
He points out that of some 250 albums, just a few of them have been surf records - though the band has a new surf album coming out before summer.
The continued popularity of the classic surf acts, along with a new wave of bands such as Nashville's Los Straitjackets and Florida's Danny Morris Band, goes to show surf music is still here, and it still rocks.
But hold the wax.
A lot of people don't know what surf music is, said Morris, who hosts a radio show in Florida.
Profiles new groups, too
On Saturday mornings, he spins classic surf acts as well as newer bands, such as The Mermen; Los Twang! Marvels, from Germany, Satan's Pilgrims, and Laika and the Cosmonauts, from Finland. And he expands the definition of surf by showing its influences and sub-genres, including roots music, Cuban, Latin, Hawaiian, and space and spy tunes.
The instrumental surf music of the late 1950s and early '60s, "that sort of came out of blues and rock 'n' roll and rockabilly," Morris said. "And then there's the Beach Boys kind of sound ... the Beach Boys added these great, beautiful harmonies to the beach sound that had already been sort of underlining, circulating with The Ventures and Dick Dale."
Morris, who lives in Florida, discovered surf music by delving into rock 'n' roll's past. In ninth grade in North Carolina, he did a report on how rock came from the blues. He explored blues and jazz and made friends with guys who were into the rockabilly scene.
"They were coming to class in pompadours and tattoos, even back then," he said. When a friend played him a Dick Dale record, "then it was just, 'Oh my gosh.' "
Morris did a stint with the Nighthawks while he was in Washington, D.C., and played in his own band on the side. When he came to central Florida to attend school, he re-formed The Danny Morris Band, which plays its guitar-driven, humor-laced surf music in Florida and abroad.
He hopes younger fans like the music as much as he does.
"There's a big surge in surf music now," is something Don Wilson of The Ventures has heard over and over again. The genre has experienced revivals during the punk era and after "Pulp Fiction." But now, it just might be true.
Each resurgence "gives it a little bit more of a lift" he said.
The Ventures, who were recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, have influenced numerous big acts over the years. For them, surf music - and the rest of the styles they've pursued, from classical music to a beloved holiday album to "Hawaii Five-0" to a NASA tribute - is just a part of their 50-year history.
When they started, "there was nothing called surf music," Wilson said. "Nothing. That term hadn't been thought of yet." And he's still never ridden a surfboard.
Nonetheless, some bands will always be linked with the beauty of the beach, though Johnston says for the Beach Boys, surf music was just a "launching pad."
"It's so much deeper than that," he said. "I'm not saying it's better or worse, it's just deeper. It's so cool."
Author
