New Subjects Crown Dick Dale King of the Surf Guitar--Again

Dick Dale, who originated the surf guitar sound in Orange County dance halls more than 30 years ago, has signed a contract with HighTone Records and is expected to release a new album this spring.

The album, tentatively titled “Tribal Surf,” will be Dale’s first since “The Tigers Loose” in 1984, a live recording from the old Golden Bear in Huntington Beach.

On the phone last week from his home in Twenty-Nine Palms, Dale, 55, said a series of successful performances in Bay Area clubs led to his new deal with HighTone. Based in Oakland, the highly-regarded independent label helped launch the career of blues guitar star Robert Cray in the mid-’80s and has issued well-received albums by such roots-rock and country performers as Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Rosie Flores, Dave Alvin and Costa Mesa’s Chris Gaffney.

“It’s so bitchin’,” Dale said. “Something has been happening in San Francisco the past six months. It’s exploding, just like the beginning days of the Rendezvous,” the Balboa peninsula ballroom where Dale launched his career in the late 1950s.

Dale’s wild guitar flights sought to evoke the elemental feeling of riding a wave on a surfboard. The staccato, reverb-drenched technique he developed defined the dramatic, aggressive, instrumental surf-rock style. Surf music’s commercial popularity waned after 1963, as most fans moved on to the Beatles and other British invaders. But Dale’s contribution laid important groundwork for many subsequent developments in the loud, raucous application of the electric guitar including psychedelic music, heavy metal and some strains of punk rock.

Dale said a feature article last year by Joel Selvin, music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, helped spark his series of shows in the Bay Area. Larry Sloven, HighTone’s managing partner, went to check out the buzz at a Dale show at Slim’s, a San Francisco nightclub.

“I was knocked out,” Sloven said. “I grew up in West L.A. and the Valley; I was too young to go see (Dale) at the Rendezvous Ballroom, but he was part of my consciousness. I heard all the ads for shows on radio, and I had all his old singles.”

Dale, who used to perform with a big band featuring a horn section, said his album will stick close to the stripped-down, power-rock format he has been using in live shows for the past few years.

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Four songs recorded as demos last year will be included on the album, Dale said. On those, he was backed by drummers Scott Matthews and Prairie Prince, an ex-member of the Tubes. Bassist Rowland Salley, from Chris Isaak’s band, also played on the sessions.

Dale said he will play an upcoming series of shows--including one Feb. 12 at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano--then will finish recording “Tribal Surf” from Feb. 18 to 28 at a studio in Sausalito. Matthews will produce and play drums. The bassist for those sessions will be Ron Eglit of Huntington Beach, who plays in Dale’s band, the Del-Tones.

Dale said the album will be mostly instrumental, with a couple of vocal numbers. “There’s material people have never heard,” he said, “songs I’ve written that have been sitting in the wings.” He said he will also record a version of Link Wray’s “Caterpillar Crawl” and a reworking of the Big Band standard “Caravan” that combines it with his own Middle Eastern-flavored surf-rock classic, “Miserlou.”

“I’m doing songs I like to do,” said Dale, who the editors of Musician magazine cite in their current issue as one of the 100 greatest guitarists of the 20th Century. “I’m not doing it for guitar (aficionados) to determine if I’m a master player or not. I’m going to play to the people. We’re doing it straight and raw.”

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Dale has shown in local concerts over the past few years that he still has his flair for exciting, extended guitar excursions.

His most recent performance on record was a 1991 guest spot with Psychefunkapus, an alternative rock band from the Bay Area that invited him to play on a song called “Surfin’ on Jupiter.”

In 1987, Dale traded licks with Stevie Ray Vaughan on a hot version of “Pipeline,” the surf-rock classic originally done by another Orange County band, the Chantay’s. The Dale-Vaughan duet, from the “Back to the Beach” film soundtrack, was nominated for a 1988 Grammy for best rock instrumental.

Dale’s available recorded output consists of “The Best of Dick Dale & His Del-Tones,” a Rhino Records compilation that includes 16 tracks from his early ‘60s heyday, plus the duet with Vaughan and a guitar piece from 1986 that Dale recorded as a radio station promo. Last year, GNP/Crescendo Records issued a 21-song “Greatest Hits” CD that combined ‘60s material (including several songs not on the Rhino package) with tracks from 1975 studio sessions.

HighTone’s Sloven said the key to Dale’s success will be whether he can tour and win fans with the sort of powerhouse shows that have made him a hit in the Bay Area.

“It’s been proven to me,” he said. “San Francisco is an area where he never had a big following, then one newspaper article, and he’s packing in 600 people every time he comes here. And that could be true anywhere in the United States.”

HighTone pitches all its releases to college, alternative and public radio, Sloven said, and Dale’s album will be no exception. “Alternative radio plays all kinds of bands who were influenced by him, and here he is, the real thing.”

* Dick Dale will play Feb. 12 at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. (714) 496-8930.