dick dale dead at 81 - RIP

[quindecima]

I remember driving from San Diego to Oceanside to see him when he played in a club there. Can't remember the name of it. When his tunes come up I know who it is instantly.

 

[FatStringer52]

Thank you for your music. RIP Dick . . .

 

[SirMjac28]

I get chills every time I see Stevie Ray and Dick was such boss

 

[Fender_Bender]

It’s a real shame he had no choice but to tour to pay his medical bills. Y’all need comprehensive free healthcare.

 

[43ManSquamish]

I saw him a few years ago at The Earl, a bar in Decatur, GA. Holy crap, he was loud! Glad I brought my earplugs. But even at his age he was still shredding like a beast and showing up the young snot-nosed punks.

And yes, it's awful he had to tour to make money for his cancer treatments.

 

[Slough Feg Bass]

I play in a surf band, and I got so many messages about this!
Glad he made it as long as he did, saw him many times, always ripping.
up there jamming with Hal Blaine now.

 

[Mister Boh]

Always hear Dick Dale in the Dead Kennedy's guitar riffs. Sorry to hear he had to fight all that so long.

 

[gjohnson441496]

He surfed.

According to the book, he looked like a god when he surfed.

 

[gjohnson441496]

It’s called surf rock because the surfers claimed his music as theirs. He was playing to packed halls all over Southern California just as new lighter boards were replacing the heavy wooden ones and surfing was exploding. And he did surf.

Yep. It was said that his music captured the sound of the surfing experience. That's why the surfers dug him.

 

[gjohnson441496]

I saw him a few years ago at The Earl, a bar in Decatur, GA. Holy crap, he was loud! Glad I brought my earplugs. But even at his age he was still shredding like a beast and showing up the young snot-nosed punks.

And yes, it's awful he had to tour to make money for his cancer treatments.

"Dale himself didn't care much about making music a national phenomenon, even after signing to the heavyweight Capital Records. Rather than touring, he preferred to stay home and play with his surfboard, his exotic cats, his sports car, and his girlfriends." From The Birth Of Loud, Kindle edition.

 

[StatesideRambler]

“Nobody played loud, because there was no reason for them to play loud, so Leo [Fender] gave me one of his amps and told me, ‘You go beat it to death, and tell me what you think of it.’ And I started blowing them up, and they would catch on fire. I blew up over 50 of his amps,” Dale told Surfer in 2010. “He would say, “Why do you have to play so loud?” but when I put it on stage, the people’s bodies would soak up the sound because I wanted my guitar to sound like Gene Krupa’s drums.”

This qoute was taken from the book, The Birth of Loud, which I'm reading and just happen to have just finished the Dick Dale section. His real name was Richard Monsour. Not only did he blow up those amps, but as Leo was trying to resolve the problem of Dick burning up the amps capacitors, Leo had his ear to the amp speaker with the volume cranked to ten to listen for hum or hiss. Dick accidentally hit a note by tripping over the guitar, ringing out a note through the 15 inch JBL speaker, causing Leo to go deaf in his ear. Now, not only did Leo have one eye (from an accident that happened during his youth on the farm) but also one ear.

Leo made the first custom amp for Dick Dale - The Dick Dale Showman.

In order to make an amp loud enough for Dick Dale, Leo had to separate the head from the cabinet. The Dick Dale Showman was the first stack.

The first Spring Reverb for guitar amps was made exclusively for Dick Dale.

Brian Wilson was inspired by Dick Dale and, although Dick Dale was the king of surf, the Beach Boys made it commercially popular. The local surfing community preferred Dick Dale's music over the Beach Boys... the locals didn't even like the Beach Boys, but the Beach Boys sang and that went over well with the rest of America, which didn't know anything about surfing culture.
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It’s called surf rock because the surfers claimed his music as theirs. He was playing to packed halls all over Southern California just as new lighter boards were replacing the heavy wooden ones and surfing was exploding. And he did surf.

Yep. It was said that his music captured the sound of the surfing experience. That's why the surfers dug him.

Dick Dale was indeed the King of the Surf Guitar but “surf music” was surf music only to non-surfers until the very late sixties. The guys on the Southern California beaches in the early 60s, riding boards and wearing baggies were listening to blues. It was the popular Beach Blanket movies that rendered reverb-drenched guitar music into “surf music.” Eventually surfers came around, pretty much because of DD, not the Beach Boys or Jan and Dean. A DD show was a real draw. If you have any doubts, look at the nearly sixty years of Dick Dale shows!