Dick Dale, who has died aged 81, was the American guitarist whose powerful twang saw him hailed as the King of the Surf Guitar. His chart success in the 1960s was brief, yet as a pioneer of the electric guitar his influence was immense, and in 1994 he won a huge new audience when Quentin Tarantino used Dale’s 1962 recording of the Greek standard Misirlou over the opening credits of his hit film Pulp Fiction.
Dale’s 1961 single, Let’s Go Trippin’, issued on his own label, Del-Tone Records, is now considered the first surf record. The following year, on Misirlou (originally titled Miserlou), he mixed Arabic scales with reverb to create one of the most exciting instrumentals in rock history.
Dale issued his debut album, the live Surfers’ Choice, in late 1962. Such was its popularity that a bidding war began and he was signed to Capitol Records in early 1963. His debut Capitol 45 was King of the Surf Guitar, also the title of an album that June. Surf music had by now become a phenomenon and Dale’s fellow southern Californians the Beach Boys were also gaining fame: on their 1963 album Surfin’ USA they covered Misirlou and Let’s Go Trippin’.
Dale performed on television on the Ed Sullivan Show and in a series of low-budget teen films made to cash in on the popularity of surfing and southern California’s beach culture, including Beach Party (1963) and Muscle Beach Party (1964). Capitol issued four more of his albums over the next two years, but then the British Invasion, spearheaded by the Beatles, rendered surf music passé, and it seemed that Dale’s career was at an end.
Born Richard Monsour in Boston, Massachusetts, to a Lebanese father and Polish mother, he grew up in the Lebanese neighbourhood of Quincy, Massachusetts. He learned to play the piano, trumpet, ukulele and guitar as a child. In 1954, Monsour’s father took a job as a machinist at the Hughes Aircraft Company in California. The family drove across the US, settling in El Segundo, a coastal town in Los Angeles County. Here Monsour finished high school and learned to surf. He performed in the town’s country music bars under the name Dick Dale and he was soon regularly appearing on a local TV talent contest.
In the 1950s the possibilities of the electric guitar were just beginning to be explored. Dale, who was left-handed but played a guitar designed for right-handers without reversing the strings, was fascinated by combining fast finger picking, reverb effects and heavy gauge strings to create sounds that he felt emulated the experience of surfing. He also began experimenting with playing Arabic scales on electric guitar.
By the early 60s, Dale was performing at dances for teenage surfers, filling the Rendezvous ballroom, on the Balboa peninsula, with more than 3,000 people every weekend. These concerts attracted the interest of the guitar manufacturer Leo Fender because Dale complained that he kept blowing up amplifiers.
Dale and Fender visited the James B Lansing loudspeaker company and worked with them to create a 15-inch amplifier that allowed for volume levels never before achieved. “When it [an amplifier] can withstand the barrage of punishment from Dick Dale, then it is fit for human consumption,” said Fender. Dale’s Fender Stratocaster guitar and Fender Showman amplifier combined to create a template for heavy rock.
With the success of his recording career, Dale invested in a mansion on the Balboa peninsula, where he kept pet tigers. After his national profile faded, he continued to perform in southern California, where he had a loyal following, but, when he developed rectal cancer in 1967, he retired from music.
In the 80s a new wave of bands began citing Dale as an influence and he returned to performing and recording in 1983 with the live album The Tiger’s Loose. That year Dale suffered severe burns in a cooking accident – from then on he would often perform benefit concerts for the burns treatment centre of the University of California. Invited to contribute to the soundtrack of Back to the Beach (1987), an attempt to revive beach movies, Dale found himself in the studio (and holding his own) with the Texan blues-rock guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Nevertheless he remained a marginal figure until Tarantino used Misirlou over the credits of Pulp Fiction, which gave Dale not only a new audience but an international career. In 1995 he played his first UK performance, at the Garage in London, and the BBC presenter and longtime fan John Peel was in the audience. Peel invited Dale to record four separate Peel Sessions and championed him on his Radio 1 show (later, the theme tune chosen for Radio 4’s Home Truths, presented by Peel, was Let’s Go Trippin’).
The British record label Beggars Banquet issued an album of new material, Calling Up Spirits (1996). Dale’s early 60s recordings were now frequently used on the soundtracks to movies, television commercials, computer games and sporting events, and the Black Eyed Peas sampled Misirlou on their 2005 hit Pump It.
A heart attack and the return of cancer forced Dale to curtail his international touring but mounting medical bills kept him on the road in the US, playing night after night right through 2018.
He is survived by his second wife, Lana, and son, James.
• Dick Dale (Richard Anthony Monsour), guitarist, born 4 May 1937; died 16 March 2019
