Ahhh, that’s sad. I just worked with him in January. He rocked. I know he’s been fighting some things for years, beat cancer some years ago . Something must have come on in the past two months. A couple good friends have spent many years in his band..I see their pictures and quotes in the article.
RIP DD
Edited by motown59 (03/17/1910:40 PM)
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kel
"I love what you guys are trying to do up there" ...from an audience member at one of my gigs. Gear: Fender Medium pick
Registered: 07/11/01
Posts: 29760
Loc: Westborough, MA, USA
Sad. RIP
_________________________ The internet, and the whole technology sector on which it floats, feels like a giant organ for bullshittery—for upscaling human access to speech and for amplifying lies. - Ian Bogost
Professor Truth T. Sweetness says,"Mind your manners!"
I checked with my friends. Apparently we were involved in Dick Dale's last gig together. I mixed that last show, and Sam B played bass in the band. Sort of weird to think of that...
There were a few cell phone videos from the night.
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kel
"I love what you guys are trying to do up there" ...from an audience member at one of my gigs. Gear: Fender Medium pick
Very interesting that he strung a left hand guitar right handed. I wonder if his first guitars were right handed that he played upside down? I played with a guy that was lefty and played a right handed guitar strung right handed because he grew up in a musical family and he was the only lefty.
Apparently Dick used extremely heavy gauge strings - possibly a .65 on the low E.
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Horn player tuning: Give me Bb.
Never mind, Just give me a B and I'll flatten it myself.
A friend of mine worked with Jeff Healey and once said to him "I could watch you all night and never figure out what you're doing". Jeff responded "I could say the same thing to you".
I also played with a guy (Fred McKenna) who played guitar like Jeff. Fred was blind and said that the reason he played like that is because his very first guitar was a Hawaiian guitar (played with a bar) and one day he was feeling around, felt the frets and figured he could get a lot more notes if he pushed down with his left hand fingers. He got so good so fast that nobody had the guts to tell him he was playing it wrong. The action on Fred's guitar was basically unplayable (high) for anybody but him.
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Horn player tuning: Give me Bb.
Never mind, Just give me a B and I'll flatten it myself.
A friend of mine worked with Jeff Healey and once said to him "I could watch you all night and never figure out what you're doing". Jeff responded "I could say the same thing to you".
hah!!!
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kel
"I love what you guys are trying to do up there" ...from an audience member at one of my gigs. Gear: Fender Medium pick
I heard on NPR yesterday that his father was Lebonese and that Miserlou was actually a sped up version of a Lebonese folk tune that he heard from his father's records. I never thought about it before but I can certainly hear that in this song and some of his others.
I don't think people know how big Dick Dale was in the late 50s, early 60s. His shows on Balboa were epic, often with a couple/few thousand people attending. His Riverside Armory shows were legend around here. He was selling tens of thousands of surf records , mostly on a local basis
He also forced Leo Fender and Freddie Tavares to up their game on amp design to handle the volume Dick needed to play those gigs. The JBL D130 15 was pretty much because of Dick blowing up dozens of the stock Fender speakers. The Single and soon to be Dual Showman amp was also because of Dale's need for more power. Reverb tank? Dick Dale. His rig is two Dual showman amps with four JBL D130 speakers. Loud as F@ck...I can attest to that.
Dick could actually surf too. It was him on the cover of what many consider the birth of Surf guitar music.
Back when he was younger, Dick would take the place of his bandmates playing drums and bass...mid-song, without missing a beat. His drummer Dusty invited me up to to a Glendale street concert where he pulled that off.
I suppose I was lucky to have him woven into my music experiences at Fender and beyond.
Edited by motown59 (03/19/1905:36 PM)
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kel
"I love what you guys are trying to do up there" ...from an audience member at one of my gigs. Gear: Fender Medium pick
Registered: 01/30/00
Posts: 7939
Loc: Sauchie, Scotland, UK
"without missing a beat"
At the gig I seen him play at Edinburgh he fingered the bass while the bassist fingered his guitar then the swapped for the picking strumming parts it was amazing to see and hear.
