Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.Dick Dale, universally hailed as the king of the 1960s surf guitar sound that heavily influenced the development of rock 'n' roll guitar — and of rock 'n' roll guitars themselves — has died at age 81. He had recently been in treatment for cancer, from which he had twice previously recovered.
Dick Dale at the National Association of Music Merchants Show in Anaheim, California, in January 2010.Dale was close friends with Leo Fender, the inventor of the Stratocaster, which helped to revolutionize rock guitar, and together, they invented the first 100-watt amplifier to handle the input with which Dale had destroyed an estimated 48 standard 30-watt boxes, according to Fender's company.
Dale reached wide new audiences during the 1990s, when his hit"Misirlou," an amped-up, high-speed updating of a Mediterranean folk song, featured prominently in the soundtrack of Quintin Tarantino's cult hit"Pulp Fiction." "I changed the tempo and just started cranking on that mother. And ... it was eerie," Dale told the Los Angeles Times in 1981."The people came rising up off the floor, and they were chanting and stomping. I guess that was the beginning of the surfer's stomp."
Saw him many times back in the day. He had his own nightclub here in Riverside CA.
😥 he was a legend
💔
Wow, he’s 83 everywhere else.
Newport Beach will never be the same.