Features
Surf’s Up For Dick Dale
In fact, the opener is about as far west as Dale will appear as he brings his distinctive style to points well east of his California home base.
Stops include Salt Lake City, Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, New York City, St. Louis and Kansas City – with no West Coast dates scheduled at this time.
Dale is largely credited with inventing the surf guitar sound while testing the then-new Fender Stratocaster as well as Fender amplifiers in the 1950s. He tested the new sound out in Southern California coastal clubs like the Rendezvous Ballroom in the surfing mecca of Balboa.
He almost became a victim of his own creation. The rise of surf music by proteges like the Beach Boys, combined with Dale’s own serious health problems, waylaid the pioneer by the mid-1960s.
He went largely unrecognized for almost 30 years, until his classic instrumental “Miserlou” – recorded with his band, the Del-Tones – was tapped for the opening sequence of the 1994 hit movie “Pulp Fiction.”
He released Unknown Territory the same year. The album was a follow-up to 1993’s Tribal Thunder, his first album since 1986.
With the resurrection of surf/garage rock in the 1990s, Dale is once again ruling as the King of Surf Music.