Godfathers of Loud Rock On

Link Wray and Dick Dale never have met, never have seen each other perform and barely have heard each other’s music.

Even so, they are a matched pair. They will go down together in history as rock’s two godfathers of LOUD; innovators who made the electric guitar roar and explode with more raucous, elemental energy than it had before they came along 40 years ago.

Wray’s 1958 single, “Rumble,” is one of the most exciting rock instrumentals recorded, a theme song for a street fight that kicked off with a merciless, brutally primal three-chord riff--the dawning of the power chord. Led Zeppelin might never have gotten to swing the hammer of the gods if Wray had not first smacked early rock ‘n’ roll fans over the head with the brass knuckles of the hoodlum.

Dale’s signatures, as the father of surf-guitar, were his dramatic staccato runs, his screaming skids along the fret board, evocative of a surfer wiping out or a race car spinning out of control, and the gushing reverb sound that gave surf music its foamy grandeur. He gathered a following in Orange County’s coastal ballrooms, began recording in 1961 and unleashed his own indelible, often-heard contribution to the instrumental-rock form with “Miserlou” in 1962.

It would be a stroke of booking genius to pair Wray and Dale on a concert bill, or, better yet, on a tour. As it is, local fans get the next best thing this week: Wray plays Wednesday at the Coach House, and Dale headlines at the same club two nights later (Wray also has a gig Thursday at the Foothill Club).

While their paths have yet to intersect, they are closely parallel.

Wray turned 70 on May 2, Dale 62 on May 4.

Both were long absent on the national scene--Dale from 1965, when he released his last surf album, until his 1993 comeback with the astounding “Tribal Thunder” album; Wray from 1980, when he moved to Denmark to focus his career in Europe, until 1997, when he returned with “Shadowman,” an album of garage rock more savage than a near-septuagenarian could be expected to make.

Both men have young wives and dote upon sons young enough to be their grandchildren. Both in recent years have captured a new generation of fans also young enough to be their grandchildren.

Both owe their renaissance partly to strategic use of their music in hit movies: Dale’s comeback got a huge boost when director Quentin Tarantino used “Miserlou” as the theme music for “Pulp Fiction.” “Rumble,” although not used on the soundtrack CD, was heard in the same movie. “Rumble” also added menace to the movie “Independence Day,” and Wray said the film exposure prompted his return to U.S. touring.

Both are inexhaustible talkers who exude the enthusiasm of teenagers. Dale’s conversation is fueled by an immense ego that on stage is gloriously channeled into his immense sound, and Wray’s twangy discourse is marked by a humble Southern charm and punctuated by frequent laughter.

Parallel Paths Never Crossed

Wray is a half Shawnee Indian who grew up dirt poor in Dunn, N.C., didn’t live in a home with electricity until he was 12, when his father got a job on a naval base in Virginia, and dropped out of school in the eighth grade. Dale, of Lebanese and Polish extraction (he was born Richard Monsour in Massachusetts), had a far more comfortable upbringing, but he has an affinity for Native American culture and philosophy, working Indian imagery into his recent compositions and album artwork.

Both had to cope with serious illness as young men: Wray lost a lung to tuberculosis, and Dale survived a heart attack and rectal cancer in his late 20s.

Neither player cites other rock ‘n’ roll guitarists as influences, pointing instead to jazz and country musicians. Dale, who started out as a drummer, credits Gene Krupa as the source of his rhythmic drive and names Chet Atkins and Les Paul as favorite guitarists, although their styles have nothing to do with his own. Wray also names Atkins as a favorite, along with jazz guitarist Tal Farlow and country picker Grady Martin.

Both got their starts as country musicians. Dale leaned toward rockabilly during the mid-1950s before his love of surfing prompted him to capture in music the rushing excitement of riding a wave. Wray and his family band--which included his two brothers and a cousin--were playing a variant of western swing on the Virginia circuit when, as he recalls it, the savagery of “Rumble” came to him spontaneously in a flash during a performance at a car show.

Both surmounted technical problems to perfect their sound. Dale got help from Leo Fender, the great Fullerton guitar maker, who by trial and error developed the Fender Showman amplifier to give Dale the power his sound required.

Wray recalls that when he tried to record “Rumble” in an ill-equipped shoe box of a studio in Washington, D.C., he couldn’t re-create the gritty menace he had stumbled upon on stage. So he jabbed pencil holes in his amplifier’s speaker cones.

“My brother said, ‘Man, you’re screwing up your amplifier,’ ” Wray recalled last week in a phone interview from a tour stop in Portland, Ore. He was indeed, creating a messy sonic havoc that yielded a classic performance.

“Rumble” propelled Wray to the Top 20 and launched a long and winding career of prolific recording--much of his output came out of a three-track studio he built in a shack in Maryland. He has jammed with Jerry Garcia and Bruce Springsteen; in the late ‘70s he helped set off rockabilly revivalism with a two-album collaboration with singer Robert Gordon.

For most of his performing life, Dale was a homebody, rarely leaving Southern California, even at the height of surf music’s popularity in the early ‘60s; consequently, he landed no national hits.

His fame instead was spread by the legion of guitar players who took cues from his explosive approach. In a move perhaps unique in rock ‘n’ roll, Dale finally became a national touring act at age 56.

Somewhere along the line--he says he can’t remember when--Dale heard “Rumble” and absorbed it enough to record a searing version on “Tribal Thunder.”

“It never was a part of my repertoire. It just popped up in my head [during the recording session] . . . so I put it through the Dick Dale meat-grinder,” Dale said last week from his desert ranch near Twentynine Palms.

Wray said he couldn’t recall hearing Dale’s music until a fan gave him a copy of “Tribal Thunder” so he could hear the new version of “Rumble.”

“It’s embarrassing that I don’t know Dick Dale’s music so much, but from what I heard of the CD, he’s a great guitar player,” Wray said.

Style Leaps Generational Lines

Dale is steaming into the next century with unflagging energy and a busy touring schedule. About a year ago, he said, Northern California guitar-maker Charles Fox built Dale a custom acoustic guitar, and Dale was so smitten with its look and sound that he has begun to work acoustic segments into his shows. He trades licks with longtime sideman Ron Eglit, who puts down his electric bass in favor of another Fox-designed acoustic guitar and joins Dale for some blues jamming, an instrumental reading of Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender” and “Bella Horizonte,” a romantic ballad inspired by the warm reception Dale received on a tour of Brazil.

“It’s so wild to see people who are skinheads, with tattoos and body pierces--all the toughies--swaying back and forth and becoming romanticized,” Dale said. Because of his fans’ strong response to the acoustic sets, Dale says his next album will be half electric and half acoustic; he plans to issue it on his own label next spring (three albums since 1993 have been on respected independent labels Hightone and Beggars Banquet).

Dale said the acoustic numbers will include an old favorite of his mother, Fern Monsour, who died of cancer last year at age 81.

Wray similarly takes delight in playing to fans raised on punk, who are now going back to the sources of rebellious rock ‘n’ roll.

“The people who come see me are 17- and 18-year-old kids, and they’re out there hollering and screaming,” Wray said. “They read about my music, keep up with who Link Wray is, and it really blows my mind.”

Wray has been backed on his four comeback tours of America by musicians--less than half his age--from the San Francisco rock band Dieselhed.He has no recording plans but figures there is time to let new music germinate.

“I’m figuring I’ll have at least 10 more years of this. Maybe I’ll slow down when I’m 80,” he said. “It’s on paper that I’m [70], but in reality when I look in the mirror and get up on stage and play, I don’t believe I’m that old.”

So how about it, promoters: Wray and Dale, in a tour dubbed “132 years of guitar heroism that shook the world”? Nobody who hears it will believe they’re that old, either.

* Link Wray, Graveyard Farmers and Dick Smiley play Wednesday at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. 8 p.m. $16.50-$18.50. (949) 496-8930. Wray and Del Noah & the Mt. Ararat Finks play Thursday at the Foothill Club, 1922 Cherry Ave., Signal Hill. 9 p.m. $17. (562) 494-5196 (club) or (562) 984-8349 (taped information). Dick Dale and the Mike Eldred Trio play Friday at the Coach House. 8 p.m. $17.50-$19.50.