Dick Dale, ‘King of the Surf Guitar,’ dead at 81
Richard Monsour may have grown up in snowy Massachusetts, but the guitarist known as Dick Dale brought the rock music of California’s surf culture to the nation.
Known as the “King of Surf Guitar,” Dale, 81, died over the weekend, according to reports.
While Dale’s music traveled around the world, his imprint on Southern California is strong. He led the surf music revolution from the Rendezvous Ballroom on the Balboa Peninsula in the late 1950s and early 1960s and over the years had residences in Newport Beach and also in the high desert community of Wonder Valley.
Dale and his family moved to Orange County from Massachusetts in 1954 and he began surfing.
“I surfed Dana Point, San Clemente, and of course Huntington Beach. Every morning you could find me at the hot water pipe,” he said in an interview with The Orange County Register in 2009.
Drawn to music, among the things Dale did was sell jars of Nivea cream door-to-door to earn a cheap prize — a cardboard ukulele from the company. His first instrument was the drums, and he often said he tried to make his guitar sound “like Gene Krupa’s drums.”
Early in his career, Dale played country music, but the song that cemented his place in rock history was “Misirlou,” which he recorded and first released in 1962. The iconic guitar riff made the instrumental, which has its roots in Egypt, a hit. “Misirlou” rode another wave of fame in the mid-1990s when Quentin Tarantino used it to open his film “Pulp Fiction.”
His songs sounded like waves crashing and adrenaline-fueled adventure.
“I’m not a guitar player,” Dale said in an interview with The Press-Enterprise in 2001. “The guitar players are guys like Stevie Vai, Eddie Van Halen, these are guys that are really masters of their instruments. I’m just a master of just getting sound, if you want to call me a master of something. In fact, I just call myself a manipulator of sound.”
But Dale was also known for his glittery gold left-handed Fender Stratocaster, “The Beast.” He also worked with Leo Fender on amplifiers that would hold up to his playing after Dale blew up quite a few.
“I went to meet Leo with my dad. I said, ‘Hi, I’m Dick Dale. I’m a surfer, I got no money and I need a guitar. I’m gonna be playing a big place called the Rendezvous Ballroom. Can you help me out?’” Dale recollected in the 2009 interview.
“He said, ‘Here, I’ve just created this guitar,’ and he handed me a Stratocaster. He said, ‘We’re still working out the bugs. Can you help us out?’”
Dale and his band the Del-Tones would attract 4,000 people to the Rendezvous in its heyday and he continued making music for decades, long after the Rendezvous burned down in 1966.
He had a cameo in the movie “Back to the Beach” in 1987, which spawned the release of his take on “Pipeline” with Stevie Ray Vaughan.
He also discovered other musicians, including seeing Jimi Hendrix playing bass with Little Richard in a Pasadena bar.
“There were about 30 people in the audience. He wasn’t Jimi Hendrix then,” Dale said in 2009.
Dale’s interests spread far beyond music. Dale was a licensed pilot and had an air strip at his property in Wonder Valley. He recollected training under martial arts masters; speeding on a motorcycle at 170 mph and fearlessly going into the cages of tigers and lions in the 2001 interview. However, he admitted that playing a gig at Disneyland in 1998 made him a little nervous — he performed atop Space Mountain without a safety harness.
Even though Dale battled health issues, including colon cancer, in recent years, he still played venues in Southern California and was scheduled to perform at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano and the Canyon in Agoura Hills in late May.
This story is developing. Check back later for updates.