Surf Music

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Charles J. Shindo

Surf music, while not always about surfing, emerged out of the subculture created by surfers in Hawaii and California in the late 1940s and 1950s. Two distinct streams of surf music developed, one primarily instrumental, the other predominately vocal, each expressing a distinctive aspect of the surfer subculture. The sound was most prominent in the early and mid-1960s, when instrumental surf music was heard accompanying television shows such as Hawaii Five-O, and vocal surf music by The Beach Boys was topping the sales charts.

While surfing as a form of recreation and sport developed in the nineteenth century as a Polynesian pastime, it was not until the early twentieth century that surfing caught on outside of Hawaii. Olympic swimming champion Duke Kahanamoku (1912 and 1920 Olympics) toured the mainland U.S. in the wake of his Olympic triumphs and created interest in surfing through exhibitions on both the East and West coasts. Early in the twentieth century, surfboards were made usually of solid wood, but big-wave riders increasingly preferred hollow boards after Tom Blake introduced one in 1928. Still, the lightest boards made of plywood weighed around 50 pounds, with big-wave boards weighing more than twice that. Blake introduced other design modifications, such as the addition of a tail fin, which aided in maneuvering.

World War II stalled surfing's development for the duration, then it transformed the sport as technological developments in plastic foams and resin revolutionized surfboard construction. Bob Simmons, a hydrodynamics student from Santa Monica, California, sandwiched polystyrene between two pieces of wood, wrapped the entire board in fiberglass, and sealed it with resin. The result was a lightweight, durable board that was shaped easily and could be maneuvered well with minimum experience. Postwar prosperity led to the development of local surfing communities in southern California, Hawaii, and eastern Australia. For many of these surfers, dedication to the sport required them to maintain "open" work schedules that allowed them to hit the surf whenever it was good. This often meant many of them were unemployed or worked only during low periods in the surf. This preference for surf over employment, reinforced by the traditional Hawaiian ideas of leisure, community, and nature, went against the grain of mainstream American postwar thinking, in which conformity and economic success were paramount.

Creating a counterculture of sorts, surfers not only promoted their sport but a way of life as well. This surfer lifestyle included Hawaiian "palapas," or palm-frond huts appearing on California beaches, with after-surf barbeques and campouts serving to bind this community together. Surfer magazine appeared in 1960 to inform the surfing community of events, products, developments, and achievements. Surfing films portrayed spectacular rides from Hawaii and Australia to California and vice versa, but these documentaries, shot on 16mm film, received little attention outside of the surfing community. Bud Browne, the pioneer of the surf documentary, presented The Big Surf, Hawaiian Surfing Memories, and Trip to Makaha, all in the 1950s. This subculture was too small to have an impact on mainstream culture until writer Frederick Kohner penned a 1956 novel based on some of the exploits of his daughter Kathy on a Malibu beach where she "hung out" with several prominent surfers including Mickey Dora (one of the sport's first superstars), Billy Al Bengston (aka "Moondoggie"), and Terry "Tubesteak" Tracey. Tubesteak began calling Kathy a "girl-midget" since she was around five feet tall, and the name quickly transformed into "Gidget." The film Gidget, based on these stories, appeared in 1959, starring Sandra Dee and James Darren. Numerous sequels and knockoffs followed, such as Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961), Beach Party and Gidget Goes to Rome (1963), Muscle Beach Party (1964), Beach Blanket Bingo and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965).

The sound tracks for these movies were composed primarily of pop music with lyrics pertaining to the beach, but a new sounding music also made an appearance in these films, surf music. Created by Dick Dale, "King of the Surf Guitar," surf music began as a musical attempt to recreate the sensation of riding a wave. Dale's combination of cascading licks, rapid playing, and a powerful bass line served as a perfect soundtrack for surf documentaries, and occasionally turned up in Hollywood beach movies, but like films based on surfing, the music also developed along two different lines. Surf music by instrumental groups like Dick Dale and the Deltones, The Ventures, The Chantays, and the Surfaris, found a devoted audience among surfers themselves, as did classic documentaries such as Bruce Brown's Endless Summer (1964). Meanwhile, beach music by vocal groups like Jan and Dean and The Beach Boys flooded the mainstream airwaves and, along with beach movies, represented the surfing subculture to most other Americans.