surf music

The tradition & historical record

Surf rock (also known as surf pop, surf music, or surf guitar) is a genre of rock and roll associated with surf culture, particularly as found in Southern California. It was especially popular from 1958 to 1964 in two major forms. The first is instrumental surf, distinguished by reverb-heavy electric guitars played to evoke the sound of crashing waves, largely pioneered by Dick Dale and His Del-Tones. The second is vocal surf, which took elements of the original surf sound and added vocal harmonies, a movement led by the Beach Boys. Dick Dale developed the surf sound from instrumental rock, where he added Middle Eastern and Mexican influences, a spring reverb, and rapid alternate picking characteristics. His regional hit "Let's Go Trippin'", in 1961, launched the surf music craze, inspiring many others to take up the approach. The genre reached national exposure when it was represented by vocal groups such as the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean. Dale was quoted on such groups: "They were surfing sounds [with] surfing lyrics. In other words, the music wasn't surfing music. The words made them surfing songs. That was the difference the real surfing music is instrumental." At the height of its popularity, surf music rivaled girl groups, Countrypolitan, and Motown for the top American popular music trend. It is sometimes referred to interchangeably with the "California sound". ¹

Surf music emerged in the late 1950s as instrumental rock and roll music, almost always in straight 4/4 (common) time, with a medium to fast tempo. The sound was dominated by electric guitars, which were particularly characterized by the extensive use of the "wet" spring reverb that was incorporated into Fender amplifiers from 1963, and was meant to emulate the sound of waves. The outboard separate Fender Reverb Unit that was developed by Fender in 1961 (as opposed to reverb that was incorporated as a built-in amp feature) was the actual first "wet" surf reverb tone. This unit is the reverb effect heard on Dick Dale records, and others such as "Pipeline" by the Chantays and "Point Panic" by the Surfaris. It has more of a wet "drippy" tone than the "built-in" amp reverb, due to different circuitry. Guitarists also made use of the vibrato arm on their guitars to bend the pitch of notes downward, electronic tremolo effects and rapid (alternating) tremolo picking. Guitar models favored included those made by Fender (particularly the Jazzmaster, Jaguar and Stratocaster), Mosrite, Teisco, or Danelectro, usually with single coil pickups (which had high treble in contrast to double-coil humbucking pickups). Surf music was one of the first genres to universally adopt the electric bass, particularly the Fender Precision Bass. Classic surf drum kits tended to be Rogers, Ludwig, Gretsch or Slingerland. Some popular songs also incorporated a tenor or baritone saxophone, as on the Lively Ones' "Surf Rider" (1963) and the Revels' "Comanche" (1961). Often an electric organ or an electric piano featured as backing harmony. ¹

By the early 1960s, instrumental rock and roll had been pioneered successfully by performers such as Link Wray, Nokie Edwards and the Ventures and Duane Eddy. This trend was developed by Dick Dale, who added Middle Eastern and Mexican influences, the distinctive reverb (giving the guitar a "wet" sound); he also added blues influence in his music, and the rapid alternate picking characteristic of the genre (influenced by Arabic music, which Dale learnt from his Lebanese uncle). His performances at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, California, during the summer of 1961, and his regional hit "Let's Go Trippin'" later that year, launched the surf music craze, which he followed up with hits like "Misirlou" (1962). While Dick Dale was crafting his new sound in Orange County, the Bel-Airs were crafting their own in the South Bay region of Los Angeles County. The band was composed of five teen-aged boys. In 1959 they were still learning to play their instruments: Dick Dodd on drums, Chas Stuart on saxophone, Jim Roberts on piano, and Eddie Bertrand and Paul Johnson on guitars. Said Johnson of his relationship with Bertrand, "Learning the guitar became a duo experience versus a solo thing. We learned to play by playing together, one guy would play the chords, the other would play the lead. This sound would become the basis for the Bel-Airs." They recorded their first single, "Mr. Moto", in June 1961 (with Richard Delvy on drums instead of Dodd) and the song received radio airplay that summer. ¹

In Matt Warshaw's The Encyclopedia of Surfing, he notes: "Surf music is divided into two categories: the pulsating, reverb-heavy, 'wet'- sounding instrumental form exemplified by guitarist Dick Dale, and the smooth-voiced, multitracked harmonized vocal style invented by the Beach Boys. Purists argue that surf music is by definition instrumental." This second category of surf music was led by the Beach Boys, a group whose main distinction between previous surf musicians was that they projected a world view. In 1964, the group's leader and principal songwriter, Brian Wilson, explained: "It wasn't a conscious thing to build our music around surfing. We just want to be identified with the interests of young kids." A year later, he would express: "I hate so-called "surfin'" music. It's a name that people slap on any sound from California. Our music is rightfully 'the Beach Boy sound'—if one has to label it." Vocal surf can be interpreted as a regional variant of doo-wop music, with tight harmonies on a song's chorus contrasted with scat singing. According to musicologist Timothy Cooley, "Like instrumental surf rock with its fondness for the twelve-bar blues form, the vocal version of Surf Music drew many key elements from African-American genres... ¹

"Hot rod music" or "hot rod rock" evolved from surf music. Dick Dale recalled how surf music was re-imagined as hot rod music by a record company-inspired move to capture a larger market. According to The Ultimate Hot Rod Dictionary, by Jeff Breitenstein: "While cars and, to a lesser degree, hot rods have been a relatively common and enduring theme in American popular music, the term hot rod music is most often associated with the unique 'California sound' music of the early to mid-1960s... and was defined by its rich vocal harmonies, amplified (generally Fender brand) electric guitars, and youth-oriented lyrics (most often celebrating hot rods and, more broadly, surfing and 'girls')." Author David Ferrandino wrote that "the Beach Boys' musical treatments of both cars and surfboards are identical", whereas author Geoffrey Himes elaborated on "subtle" differences: "Translating the surf-music format into hot-rod tunes wasn't difficult.... If surf music was a lot of Dick Dale and some Chuck Berry, hot-rod music was a little more Berry and a little less Dale—i.e. less percussive staccato and more chiming riffs. ¹

In late 1961 the Beach Boys had their first chart hit, "Sur… ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Surf music”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

surf music is music genre, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 19 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²