The last lecture for this week is devoted to the topic of surf music. Music from Southern California, during this period between 1960 and 1963. Surf music was a, a uniquely American kind of music, that really spoke to the kind of good, clean Southern California fun of mostly middle-class white kids, living close to the ocean and most of the topics of surf music songs have to do either with surfing, cars or girls. And if you come up with a tune that's got cars, girls and surfing in it all together, you've just sort of, you've, you've hit the big one, there. And, this, this surf music thing really comes out of kind of a vocal tradition and also and instrumental tradition. So, when we talk about surf music, we should talk about it in, in, terms of two different kind of styles of surf music. We'll divide, divide, it into vocal styles and instrumental styles. I'll start with instrumental styles first although the vocal styles, are, are really much more, influential in the history of rock music, than the instrumental styles are, still, the instrumental styles were important especially among guitarists. And they've, they've enjoyed, certain various periods of resurgence in the time since the early 1960s. So let's start with your instrumental stuff. the most important guitarist in instrumental, surf music is a guy by the name of Dick Dale. His, his, group was called Dick Dale and the Deltones. And his big hit was a, was a, a track called Miserlou from 1962. Dick Dale really was a surfin' guy. You know? He tells the story about, you know? He'd be out surfin'. He's come in, he'd towel down. He's put on his Fender guitar and they would do the gig. Dick Dale played left handed, he played the guitar strung upside down and he developed this really fast picking technique that he would use. Very much, like a Middle Eastern sort of stringed instrument, in fact, Miserlou is derived from traditional music from the Middle East. and so, this sort of whole approach to instrumental surf music, music that, you
