From sand & surf

to sand & more sand

Jenifer Ragland

Dick Dale, the man who once strove to break the sound barrier of electric

guitars on his custom Fender Stratocaster, now lives in a place where at

any given point in the day, you can stand in the middle of the road and

experience absolute silence.

Dick Dale, whose well-known house overlooking the Wedge at the very end

of the Balboa Peninsula defined crazy and hectic, now lives in a place

that -- if directions are lost -- is impossible to find.

Dick Dale, the king of the surf guitar, is about a three-hour drive from

the roaring waves that inspired his legend.

But he still has the sand.

It’s been nearly 50 years since Dale, 62, made his debut as a musician at

the Rendezvous Ballroom in old Balboa, and although he admits he has “a

story for everything,” those days appear to be the farthest from his

mind. Living in the middle of the desert in Twenty-nine Palms, Dale’s

energy is focused on one thing and one thing only: his family.

His eyes light up when he talks about the day he met his 32-year-old

wife, Jill, or how he has taught his gifted 7-year-old son, Jimmy, how to

play drums, practice Tae Kwon Do -- even fly a plane. He raises two

horses and seven dogs, is fixing up a 1967 Rolls Royce and is a licensed

pilot. One thing that is sure to get him talking is his favorite plane,

the Cessna 337B Super Skymaster, which is parked alongside his very own

runway in the back of his modest ranch.

The desert is his domain now, and Dick Dale is quick to assert that he

doesn’t miss the beach.

“I love it out here,” he said on a recent Saturday afternoon. “When I

lived at the beach, I surfed every day. But out here -- this is the

closest thing to being back at birth in the womb.”

Sitting on the soft, worn-in brown couch in his living room, Dale plays

with Jimmy and one of their many “desert dogs,” Cory. A large,

state-of-the-art entertainment center and stacks of laser disc movies

fill up most of the room, which is otherwise fairly bland.

Though his humble home in the desert may not show it, Dale is a legend in

his own time. He was the first person to create the surf music sound,

which has inspired countless artists. He took a sport he loved and

developed a soundtrack for it, using a style of guitar-playing that had

never before been seen. He’s left-handed, but plays a right-handed guitar

“upside-down backwards.” The end result was a mind-blowing sound that

made millions of people in the 1950s and ‘60s Dick Dale fans for life.

He was the first rock guitarist to have more than one record on the Top

10 charts at one time, have five songs from a single album on the charts

at once, sell out the Los Angeles sports arena and perform on the Ed

Sullivan Show.

But while many artists of his era would jump at the chance to gloat about

their glory days, Dale appears to have little patience for it. It’s as

though he has too many stories to tell and there just isn’t time. So he

focuses on the present.

Jimmy, who clearly is Dale’s pride and joy, is two degrees from a black

belt in Tae Kwon Do. Home-schooled by Dale and Jill, Jimmy computes

difficult math problems in his head and knows how to read complicated

flight instruments. He’s been playing drums -- Dale’s first instrument

also -- since he was 1 1/2 and has built intricate Star Wars-inspired

flying machines out of Legos.

His father has taught him well.

“What is your code in Tae Kwon Do?” Dale asks.

“Courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self control,” Jimmy recites in his

tiny voice. “Don’t give up, because the spirit inside you can never be

broken!”

Not only can he fly a 337-Skymaster, Jimmy knows how to operate a vehicle

and can navigate his way around a personal computer just as well -- if

not better -- than any adult can.

“This is what all children can do,” Dale asserts, “if you love them and

spend quality time with them.”

His philosophy is to teach Jimmy as much as he can about everything,

which is what he has done all of his life.

“I am a jack of all trades, master of none,” he said. “If you were a

master of one thing, you’d be pretty dull at a party, wouldn’t you?”

Dale lived in Newport Beach from 1955 to 1988. He met21-year-old Jill at

a funeral of a mutual friend and fell in love. The two then moved to the

desert to be closer to Dale’s elderly parents. (His mother, 81, died in

June and his father 88, still lives there) Three years later they had

Jimmy. The name, interestingly enough, wasn’t taken from a fellow rock

guitar player but from a movie actor who also has Newport Beach roots.

Dale said Jimmy is the namesake for Dale’s father, James, and Jill’s

father, Wayne.

And while many people today may not recognize his name, almost every

person on the planet would recognize his most famous song, “Miserlou.”

The enchanting instrumental inspired Quentin Tarantino to write the

soon-to-be-cult-classic “Pulp Fiction” and, once it became the popular

film’s title song, gave Dale the momentum for a long-awaited comeback.

“Most people write a movie and then come up with a song,” Dale said. “But

Tarantino gets a song, goes crazy over it, and locks himself in a room

until he comes up with a movie.”

Dale said he will never forget the words Tarantino said when he asked his

permission to use “Miserlou” in the film.

“He said, ‘I would like to use the energy of that song to create a

masterpiece of a movie, which would go with the masterpiece of the song,’

” Dale recalled.

Tarantino couldn’t have picked a better title track. The pounding sounds

of “Miserlou” became synonymous with the movie, which was nominated for

several Academy Awards and could probably be found in the room of every

college student today.

But now, more than four years after the movie’s release, Dale’s pace

clearly has slowed. He said he even has a hard time gearing up to go on

the road. He stayed home on his last tour because he was spending all the

money he was making on phone calls home. And he dreads leaving again this

fall.

“It pains me to leave my child,” Dale said.

But once he’s on stage, Dale said he can’t help but love it. “My music is

an attitude of everything I’ve seen and been through,” he said, holding

his guitar “The Beast” -- the only one he has played since 1955 --

affectionately over his shoulder. “I am a person who gets sound out of

instruments. They are my blood -- I feed off of them.”

He said near-future goals are to build a recording studio in his airplane

hangar and to eventually turn the building into a Dick Dale museum.

Until then, he will continue playing shows around California and Nevada.

Upcoming performances include today’s Rhino Records Retrofest in Santa

Monica, two shows at Lake Tahoe Aug. 19 and 20 and the Catalina Casino

Ballroom on Sept. 25. For more information, visit his Web site at

www.dickdale .com.

FYI

Albums:

“Surfers’ Choice” (Deltone 1962)

“King of the Surf Guitar” (Capitol 1963)

“Checkered Flag” (Capitol 1963)

“Mr. Eliminator” (Capitol 1964)

“Summer Surf” (Capitol 1964)

“Rock out with Dick Dale and his Del-Tones: Live at Ciro’s” (Capitol

1965)

“The Tiger’s Loose” (Balboa 1983)

“Tribal Thunder” (High Tone 1993)

“Unknown Territory” (1994)

“Calling up Spirits” (Beggars Banquet 1996)

“Compilations/Anthologies/Soundtracks: Hot Rod Music on Capitol” (Capitol

1963)

“The Big Surfin’ Sounds on Capitol” (Capitol 1964)

“King of the Surf Guitar: The Best of Dick Dale & The Del-Tones” (Rhino

1986)

“Pulp Fiction soundtrack” (1994)

“Cowabunga Surf box set” (1996)

“Better Shred Than Dead: The Dick Dale Anthology” (Rhino 1997)

“Music for Our Mother Ocean II” (Surf Dog Records 1997)

Honors and achievements:

1988 Dick Dale and Stevie Ray Vaughn Nominated for a Grammy Award for the

music in the movie “Back to the Beach.”

1989 Dale inducted into the Surfing Hall of Fame, located in the Hall of

Champions building in San Diego.

1996 Dale presented a Platinum Record award for his performance recording

of “Miserlou,” the guitar instrumental that gave Quentin Tarantino the

energy force to create the movie Pulp Fiction. “Miserlou” was made the

Title song.

1996 Dale inducted into the Hollywood Rock Walk of Fame.