Surfing Pop Culture and A world Beyond the Sands and Music.

Being born when I was, I was able to hear first generation surf music such as Moon Dawg by the Gamblers (which has the designation as being the first surf instrumental recorded being waxed in 1959), Pipeline by Downey's Chantays http://www.thechantays.com/, Underwater by the Frogmen when they were still new. Saw a few of them on KCOP Channel 13 or KHJ Channel 9 when they were really local. Lloyd Thaxton, 19th Street West, and other local television shows were all that was needed prior to the national dance show of American Bandstand. I don't remember it until around 1966. Unless you were alive and aware of it, the television scene for Los Angeles music, was very vibrant back then. Even country and western music was shown and I had even heard of Nashville yet.
Pipeline by the Chantays was and is my favorite surf rock instrumental. It has no rivals. When I finally was able to meet Brian Carmen and Bob Spikard, who composed it as 11th graders, it was a thrill. Wipe-Out by the second Surfaris http://thesurfaris.com/ was a major hit twice during the 1960s and maybe the Beach Boys music prevented it from doing even better!

Years went by that I seldom heard surf music on the radio. I started haunting second hand stores, garage sales, and record swap meets to quench or satiate my rock instrumental hunger; pop music vocals were leaving me cold as early as 1962. 40 years later I managed to see a few of the men that were still boys when I first heard them. At the Gene Autry Museum the Surfaris, with the late Jim Pash, played and I was there. Paul Johnson http://www.pjmoto.com/, a founder of the surfing rock instrumental sound, also performed as did the Lively Ones, and Eliminators and, of course, Dick Dale. Paul Johnson's band, The Bel-Aires also spawned the Challengers and Eddie and the Showmen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_%26_the_Showmen. The Challengers outlived most of their contemporaries with the late Richard Delvy http://www.discogs.com/artist/467531-Richard-Delvy as it's drummer and leader.

 Why did the surfing music cease to be played where it was born? The answers are not easy nor terribly difficult to answer. We, in the States, has post-national groups like our invisible government The Council on Foreign Relations http://www.cfr.org/ that is very much tied to England and its Plutarch. Then the 'great', tax-exempt foundations, as Norman Dodd, exposed, also determine much that becomes the national or rather, international memory of Americans away from our unique culture and its value. To understand music by simply looking into books on it, misses much. In 1962 true conservative Dan Smoot and his Dan Smoot Report https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NvLsKeOlmY are still essential readings or seeing. What a man! http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/953848/posts wrote the seminal book on this eastern establishment called The Invisible Government https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQhnXm710ps, and even Joseph McCarthy began to shine his probing light towards the eastern establishment elites too and became a #1 target!

 Instrumental music, it should be recalled has an emphasis on the MENTAL. It is more like radio. A theater of the mind in which everyone interprets the sounds differently, so a controlling consensus is much more difficult to attain. Vocals, I believe, are akin to television. Explicit. Leaving less to individual imagination. With the influx of UK acts like The Beatles, whom I still like, Mi6 and its counterparts in the states, saw new opportunities for control and, in my opinion, debauchery through the still young, rock and roll. This may have been why The Shadows of England, who nearly totally instrumental, did not catch on: not the proper vehicle for use by intelligence agencies. I know they impacted as I have spoken to rock instrumentalists who got started in the 1950s or '60s, and all, without exception knew of and admired the sounds of The Shadows http://www.hank-marvin.dk/side2English.html. Led by Cliff Richard http://www.cliffrichard.org/, they were, in my opinion and many others, the best of the teen idol bands. Unlike US acts, UK backing bands also got contracts. This allowed them to earn wages even if the singer, say an Elvis, was busy making movies or in the military, as an act in their own right.

 Concurrent with this music, I followed kustom car and hotrods. Read Cartoons, followed Tony Nancy, Parnelli Jones, AJ Foyt, and Mickey Thompson as well as Ed Roth, Barris custom cars, skateboarding and surfing. I knew who Miki Dora http://www.surfline.com/surfing-a-to-z/miki-dora-biography-and-photos_792/ and Corky Carroll  were before I knew who Bart Star, or Rosey Grier were.

 

Officially surf music is designated as a form of California folk music, according to Brian Chidester and Domenic Priore's excellent book: Pop Surf Culture: Music, Design, Film and Fashion from the Bohemian Surf Boom,  on surfing music and surfing culture over the last 100 plus years. If you're interested in it, it a book you cannot do without.http://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/1595800352/ref=acr_offerlistingpage_text?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1 I got my hardback copy of it before the price skyrocketed to over $100.00!

Here is a marvelous website (in Spanish) devoted to the rock instrumental rockers:http://salvadordominguez.blogspot.com/2012/09/el-rock-instrumental.html

Cars and Guitars in Southern California including Glendale.

Long has the link between music and cars been known. Rocket 88 by Ike Turner and sung by Jackie Brenston in 1952 is about cars. Bill Haley covered it with his clankety-clank style of rock-a-billy. Buick 59 by the Medallions and many others. Artist Robert Williams http://robtwilliamsstudio.com/ put out a double elpee set of music covering the late 1940s to early 1960s. Von Dutch http://www.vondutch.com/, a patron saint of pin-striping, is even mentioned in on of the songs from about 1959. Not what one hears, although he should, on KRTH or some 'oldies' collection hawked by a baby-boomer on television celebrating his or her graying hairs.

Of course no collection of cars, not matter what fancy gagets is has, is complete without a Ford Thunderbird; simply is not possible. In the 1950s and '60s a golden age of hotrod and kustom kulture thrived in Southern California. While I had posters of Sandy Koufax and Don Drisedale on my bedroom wall. I also had pictures of Mickie Thompson, A.J. Foyt, and Parnelli Jones. Robert Williams and Ed Roth were favorite artists and still are. Black, White, and Brown were enamored with kustom kulture.

In the musical tradition of cool and cars Big Sandy and his Fly-Rite Boys http://www.bigsandy.net/ and Los Strait Jackets http://www.straitjackets.com/ loom large. I have seen both several times and felt as though I had not paid enough to attend their excellent shows.

  http://www.bigsandy.net/

Just Like Eddie Cochran

Big Sandy at the Bordello in Los Angeles

One of the best and clearest singers live, that I have ever heard!

Levi Dexter at the Cochran Club

Little Mo!

Just Like Eddie was also the title of a 1963 song by Heinz Burt, former member of the UK rock instrumental act The Tornadoes masterminded by Joe Meek. Eddie Cochran was, in some ways, a visionary musician. When asked about rock and roll in February of 1959, just after the death of good friend Buddy Holly http://www.buddyhollyandthecrickets.com/, his comments were in affect, "I think it's going to be around for a long time, just not in the form we have it today. I've been hearing that it's gonna go for the last five years or so, and it's still here..."
He came into the studio ready. Well versed in the current technology of the times as well and was a guitarist of extraordinary skill and talent: he could play anything. After maybe three listenings any style he heard, he could play. He was poised to be the first guitar hero and even Jimi Hendrix requested that his music be played at his funeral; request granted.

Regarding his terrible death he was one of the last real rockers standing during the teen-idol era who refused to do that. He had the looks. He had it all but the orientation to do that and even ducked out on Ed Sullivan to preserve his rocker image! Hollywood might have used him more and being at the epicenter of the rock instrumental culture coming, no doubt he would have flourished even more. In fact a number of the surf bands were very influenced by Eddie Cochran in at least two ways 1. his sense of humor, and 2. Ray Charles music. And he could play! Very affable chap.

A committed Gretch player, his friend and fellow guitarist Dick Dale, would discuss where they believed guitar was going. Dick was a solid body player and reasoned that speed, playing technique, and the studio were going to be instrumental; and he was correct. Remember Dick Dale has country and western roots as well.

Recently in Bell Gardens, the Cochran Club was opened. I was there for the christening and took the following pictures.

Raphael the artist

Blue Denim

Bobby Cochran

Some of the entertainers included Blue Denim, Levi Dexter http://www.punkglobe.com/levidexterinterview0610.html, Little Mo...

Blue Demin from Sydney Australia.http://www.reverbnation.com/bluedenim

Rock-a-billy music http://www.mp3rockabilly.com/, orignally just called rock and roll even in the south, his a strong hear in the Los Angeles area. Ask John Fogerty. Overseas and up in Canada, when the American in American music was finally strangled within the corporate-intelligence culture comprising Top 40 and so on and Alex Constantine's book: The Covert War Against Rock and Rebels of the Air by Jessie Walker http://reason.com/people/jesse-walker/articles and Fighting for Air by: Eric Klinenberg https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/72/Fighting_For_Air_An_interview_with_Eric_Klinenberg.html are indispensable to an understanding of this.

American music flourished! What was the end stateside, were the beginnings elsewhere. Cliff Richard and The Shadows ruled in England http://www.cliffrichard.org/, Johnny Halliday in France where he is still much beloved today and has had the great talents of Brian Setzer http://www.briansetzer.com/ playing with him recently as well https://www.facebook.com/Fan.Club.Johnny.Hallyday. These and a number of others remain not well known in the USA but should be! I find European rock-a-billy, not the chart music ones hears on some Top 40 Oldies station, much more interesting. I call it solid-state rock and roll because it sound as though no tube speakers were used, or seldom use. They are hard on themselves! Very critical at times with the music because it is not exactly like Buddy Holly or Chuck Berry http://chuckberry.com/, tell me who is?

In Canada rock-a-billy continued well into the 1960s. There is an annoying pattern. It is when elements within America starves its people at home but enriches what often turns out to be competitors or future enemies abroad.