Surf music

Surf music is a subgenre of rock music that originated in the surf culture of Southern California around 1960. It is associated with themes of good times, adventure, and romance. The music intersected with the post-World War II car culture, and many songs are about hot rods. Surf music may be classified as instrumental or vocal. Performers of vocal surf music include Jan and Dean and the Beach Boys. Dick Dale, the Del-Tones, the Duals, and the Ventures are artists associated with instrumental surf music, which is characterized by driving drumbeats and twangy guitar. Further, the Orange County Sound is known for reverberation, while the South Bay Sound is more melodic.

Background

Surf culture infiltrated mainstream popular culture during the late 1950s, thanks to author and screenwriter Frederick Kohner. Kohner was inspired to write a young adult novel about the surf culture when his daughter, Kathy, began surfing. Kathy was five feet tall and weighed ninety-five pounds. On June 24, 1956, she rode her first wave at the age of fifteen and was hooked on the sport. She spent her free time at Malibu Beach in Los Angeles, where she traded peanut butter sandwiches she made at home for the use of surfboards at a beach shack owned by Terry “Tubesteak” Tracy. He gave her the nickname Gidget, short for “girl midget,” one day in Malibu, and the name stuck.

The diminutive surfer, one of only a few women on boards, became adept at her sport. She earned the respect of legendary surfers in Malibu and regularly rode the waves with them. She wrote everything in her diary and told her father about her adventures every day. Kohner was fascinated by the surfer slang and the subculture and wrote a novel about surf life. He put a young girl modeled after his daughter at the center of the book. Gidget: The Little Girl with Big Ideas was published in 1957 and was successful enough to prompt Kohner to write several other Gidget novels.

More than half a million copies of Gidget were sold. Two weeks after it was published, Kohner had an offer from Columbia Pictures for a film series about Gidget. He sold the rights for $50,000 with his daughter getting 5 percent. Paul Wendkos directed three Gidget films for Columbia, with the first, Gidget, released in 1959. Gidget Goes Hawaiian followed in 1961, and Gidget Goes to Rome arrived in theaters in 1963. The first film starred Sandra Dee as 16-year-old Frances Lawrence, aka Gidget.

Young Americans were enthralled by the film and surf culture. Gidget even became a television series starring Sally Field in 1965. Gidget in all forms inspired girls to learn to surf; however, Kathy Kohner said it also made Malibu so crowded that she and the guys she surfed with gave up going there.

In the early 1960s, other studios released a number of surfer movies featuring young people falling in love on the beach and in the water. The most popular series of films starred Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello and featured performers including the Animals, the Beach Boys, Little Richard, Stevie Wonder, and the Supremes.

Overview

The Belairs of South Bay, Los Angeles, produced some of the earliest surf music. The instrumental “Mr. Moto” was highly influential and reportedly was the first recording of the subgenre. It was released in 1961 when surfer movies were immensely popular. Musician Dick Dale, a surfer who declared himself the “king of the surf guitar,” had the first charted song of surf music, “Let’s Go Trippin',” in 1961.

The best-known surf music groups are arguably The Beach Boys and Jan and Dean. The groups were not only on the charts at the same time, but they also shared friendships and musical talent.

The Beach Boys began as a family group in Hawthorne, a suburb of Los Angeles, California. Brian Wilson taught his younger brothers, Dennis and Carl, to sing. Brian had studied music theory, and he discovered the three were able to harmonize beautifully. Dennis played drums, and Carl was the lead guitarist. During family gatherings, their cousin, Mike Love, joined them, as did a friend of Brian’s, Al Jardine. Jardine left to complete college and was replaced by David Marks. The first album, Surfin’ Safari, was released in 1962 and yielded the top-twenty title track.

The group produced many of the best-known surf songs, including “Surfer Girl,” “Surfin’ USA,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “Sloop John B,” “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “God Only Knows,” and “Good Vibrations.” The Beach Boys were known for their cheerful sound and tight harmonies. Although the subject matter of their music was often surfing, only Dennis Wilson occasionally took a board into the ocean. Brian Wilson was the writer and producer for the band.

The rock duo Jan and Dean was made up of William Jan Berry and Dean Ormsby Torrence. The pair were high school classmates and part of a doo-wop group with some other friends during the 1950s. After many fits and starts, they had a top-ten doo-wop hit in “Baby Talk” in 1959. After several years trying to find the right sound and getting only weak material from their record label, they began writing their own songs. Jan and Dean played some shows with the Beach Boys, who were just gaining a following, and were inspired by the harmonic similarities.

Brian Wilson and Jan Berry became friends, with Wilson giving Berry an incomplete song that he was having trouble finishing. Berry completed it, and Jan and Dean released it as “Surf City” in 1963. It was their first number-one single. Having found the formula that worked for them, Jan and Dean leaped into the surf music subgenre. Among their hits were “The Little Old Lady from Pasadena,” “Ride the Wild Surf,” “Drag City,” and “Dead Man’s Curve.”

The Beach Boys and Jan and Dean were vocal surf music groups, but one of the most popular surf tunes is “Wipe Out.” Although classified as an instrumental, it does contain the vocal phrase “wipe out.” It was recorded by a band called the Surfaris and is best known for long drum solos played by Ron Wilson. It was originally the hastily recorded B side of a single, of which only one hundred copies were pressed. Rereleased on a different label, the sides were flipped, and music history was made. Surf music declined after the 1960s, due in part to the popularity of the bands from what would become known as the British Invasion. The sound of popular music shifted away from surf sounds and began to incorporate more elements of rock and roll.

Bibliography

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Jackson, Nate. “Benefit Show Lends a Hand to Surf Rock Legend Paul ‘Mr. Moto’ Johnson.” OC Weekly, 6 Dec. 2018, www.ocweekly.com/benefit-show-lends-a-hand-to-surf-rock-legend-paul-mr-moto-johnson. Accessed 16 Jan. 2025.

Kavka, Naomi. “Surf Rock: Then, Now, and Forever.” Vivascene, 26 Mar. 2021, www.vivascene.com/surf-rock-then-now-and-forever. Accessed 16 Jan. 2025.

MP, Luís. “Gidget: The Story of Hollywood’s First Surfing Star.” Surfer Today, www.surfertoday.com/surfing/gidget-the-story-of-hollywoods-first-surfing-star. Accessed 16 Jan. 2025.

MP, Luís. “What Is Surf Music?” Surfer Today, www.surfertoday.com/surfing/what-is-surf-music. Accessed 16 Jan. 2025.

Meares, Hadley. “Surfin’ Malibu.” Curbed Los Angeles, 19 July 2018, la.curbed.com/2018/7/19/17588336/gidget-malibu-history-surfing-surfrider-beach. Accessed 16 Jan. 2025.

Smith, Michael. “‘Wipeout’ with the Surfaris at Vinyl Music Hall.” Pensacola News Journal, 2 Aug. 2017, www.pnj.com/story/entertainment/events/gopensacola/music/2017/08/02/wipeout-surfaris-vinyl-music-hall/533878001. Accessed 16 Jan. 2025.

Torrence, Dean. Surf City: The Jan & Dean Story. SelectBooks, Inc., 2016.