The One And Only Big Year For Surf Music - 1963

Let’s stay in the late 1950s and early 1960s for a brief look and listen to those instrumentals, mainly surf music, but also Duane Eddy, simple rockabilly and western tunes, the mighty Shads, and the novelty of Let there be drums all boomf, bash and base, by the big teenager Sandy Nelson. These twanging and tinkling instrumental noises nudged my interest in popular music. Before these instrumentals, the radio provided streets of comedy with the “Button Down Mind” of Bob Newhart – always an amusing thought – and the cool but crazy ramblings of Flavius Maximus, Private Roman Eye in Rinse the Blood off my Toga. Shakespeare had never sounded better. Or Allan Sherman – off to summer camp with “Hello Muddah Hello Faddah here I am at Camp Granada!” Who was listening to the music? Elvis Who?

But the twang got me. In a brief moment in time, surf music ruled and then came the Beatles. More on them later. When the Merseymania hit Australia and we all lost our minds for a while, an older acquaintance (who dressed like someone out of Jailhouse Rock) asked me whether I had heard of The Shadows…..you know Apache…tomtom intro and big ranch guitar. Shock Horror! They had passed me by; it must have been Big Julie who had my attention at the time. I told him “Don’t go, don’t go!!!…” Anyway the short of it is that I went down to the local Record Store in High Street Preston and bought Apache and wow could Hank Marvin play guitar (even with those funny glasses), and what a cool and precise drummer in Tony Meehan.

The combination of The Shadows from England, The Ventures in the States and the American surf groups was something else. And all the vocal groups, singing sensations, crooners and songs could not dent that space. At least for a little while.

My listing of the intriguing, the exciting, and the crazy instrumental and surf sounds, in no particular order, is created below:

Who	What	Where & When	Billboard Top 100
Chantays	Pipeline	Orange County, California 1963	#4
Surfaris	Wipeout	Glendora, California 1963	#2
The Trashmen	Surfer Bird	Minneapolis, Minnesota 1963	#4
Sandy Nelson	Let there be drums	Santa Monica, California 1961	#7
Duane Eddy	Peter Gunn, Ballad of Paladin	Phoenix, Arizona 1959 & 1962	#27 and #33
The Ventures	Walk don’t run	Tacoma, Washington, 1960	#2
The Spotnicks	Orange Blossom Special	Sweden, 1962	#29 (UK)
Link Wray & His Raymen	Rumble, The Black Widow	North Carolina, 1958 & 1963	#16
The Shadows	Apache, Man of Mystery, FBI, The Savage, 36 24 36	United Kingdom, 1960 & 1961	#1 #5 #5 #9 (UK)
Jet Harris& Tony Meehan	Diamonds	United Kingdom, 1963	#1 (UK)

The Challengers	K-39	Los Angeles, California, 1964
Dick Dale	Miserlou, The Victor, King of the Surf Guitar, Surf Beat	El Segundo, California, 1962
Jack Nitzsche	The Lonely Surfer	Chicago, Illinois 1963	#37
The Lively Ones	Surf Rider	Southern California, 1963
The Tornadoes (USA)	Bustin’ Surfboards	Redlands, California, 1963
The Belairs	Mr Moto	South Bay Los Angeles 1961
The Marketts	Out of Limits		#3
The Impacts	Blue Surf	Featuring Merrell Fankhauser 1962
The Pyramids	Penetration	Long Beach California	#20
Santo & Johnny	Sleepwalk	NYC, New York 1959	#1
Atlantics	Bombora	Sydney, Australia	#1
Thunderbirds	Wild Weekend	Melbourne, Australia 1963	#13(1960)#31(1963)
The Denvermen	Surfside	Sydney, Australia 1963	#1
The Strangers	The cry of the wild goose	Melbourne, Australia 1963	#12
The Phantoms	Stampede	Melbourne, Australia 1962	#27

And there were a few surf songs that snuck under the radar. Here goes:

Beach Boys	Surfin’ USA, Fun Fun Fun, Surfin’ Safari, California Girls		#3 #5 #14 #5
Jan & Dean	Surf City		#1
Surfaris	Surfer Joe	Glendora, California 1963	Flipside to Wipeout
The Rivieras	California Sun	South Bend, Indiana 1964	#5