Better Shred than Dead

To be honest, I don't even know why they have a Rock an Roll Hall of Fame if they overlook guitar giants like Dick Dale. This has to be its most outrageous snub, given the tremendous impact he made on the guitar world back in the late 50s and early 60s. His surf guitar defined a generation, including guitar gods like Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan, both of whom paid tribute to Dale on numerous occasions. Sadly, his music was virtually forgotten with the British invasion of the mid-60s, but you would think with the revival of Misirlou in Pulp Fiction, Cleveland would have taken notice.

Dick Dale inspired a dance craze, selling out ballrooms throughout California. Let's go Trippin' was probably the earliest of the surf rock songs, and is instantly recognizable. Dale, whose real name is Richard Anthony Monsour, derived his unique sound from the traditional songs of Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries, which he developed a strong interest in. His father was Lebanese. His mother Polish-Belarusian. You don't realize how much these folk forms inspired rock and roll music until you hear some of the traditional songs that had a big impact on these early musicians. Dick made this Egyptian song into Misirlou by speeding up the tempo and adding a lot of reverb. All's fair in rock and roll.

Dale's style of play was so fast and so furious that Leo Fender had to come up with new ways to amplify the sound so that it didn't come out a garbled mess. Many Fender amps were blown along the way. Eventually they came up with the Fender Showman, specifically tailored to Dick Dale's brutal chords. If that wasn't reason enough to honor him when they first opened the Hall of Fame in 1983, I don't know what is. What makes his omission even more hard to accept is that Ahmet Ertugun was the one to establish the Hall of Fame, and knew Dale personally, having written a song for him way back in 1954. It's not like Dale was nowhere to be found. He was still touring in 1983 and was nominated for a Grammy for his performance with Stevie Ray Vaughan on Pipeline.

He was deeply loved and appreciated in the music world. Hendrix being one of his biggest fans made reference to him in his 1967 song, Third Stone from the Sun. Overshadowed by the Beach Boys and the Beatles, Dick Dale simply couldn't compete for the public's attention anymore and briefly retired from music as he faced what he thought to be terminal cancer. Many thought this would be the end of surfer guitar, as Jimi plaintively noted, but Dale recovered and found his groove again. It is safe to say that without Dick's pioneering efforts, we may never have heard reverb quite the way we did on this song. It was Dale who later paid tribute to Hendrix by covering the song.

Dick Dale not only survived cancer but many other ailments to keep touring and recording into his 80s, but by this point he was seen mostly as a novelty act. People just didn't understand how great and influential he was in his time. If the Rock and Roll of Fame has any merit, it is time to honor the greatest of surfer guitarists with posthumous recognition.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Searchers

You are invited to join us in a discussion of The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl. The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics' Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts. The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories. The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...

TripplerJune 20, 2022 at 4:58 PM
Agree 100%.

All too often election into the R&RHOF is based on record sales rather than degree of artistic influence as it should be.

Back in the 1960s we had many recording artists whose works were influenced by Dick Dale. In fact many movies in that era were based on the lifestyle influenced by such works. Sadly, Mr Dale did not get royalties from such songs/movies even though he largely inspired them.

Dick Dale defo belongs in R&RHOF.
James FergusonJune 20, 2022 at 6:13 PM
Nice we can agree on something ;)

Dispatches from Vilnius

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