Dick Dale Caricature

Dick Dale Caricature shown here on September 9, 1963, age 26 in Los Angeles, California with his 1958 left-handed seafoam Fender Stratocaster.

Richard Anthony Monsour, better known by his stage name Dick Dale, is an American rock guitarist, known as The King of the Surf Guitar. He pioneered and created what many call the surf music style, drawing on Middle-Eastern music scales and experimenting with reverberation.
The “breakneck speed of his single-note staccato picking technique” and showmanship with the guitar is considered a precursor to heavy metal music, influencing guitarists such as Jimi Hendrix and Eddie Van Halen.
Early in his career, Dale played at local country bars where he met Texas Tiny, who gave him the name “Dick Dale” because he thought it was a good name for a country singer.

Famously, the left-handed Dale’s trademark staccato picking stems from playing a right-handed guitar upside down. But this was no Jimi Hendrix-esque modification. Hendrix, a fellow lefty, restrung his guitars when he flipped them over, but Dale kept his strung the way they were, with the heaviest strings on the bottom. Because this reverses the angle of the bridge pickup, Dale achieved more high-end bite on the bass strings and warmer treble tones.

In the late 1950’s, Dale and Leo Fender became fast friends. So as Fender began making amplifiers, he let Dick beta test them; Dale blew up the first 50 amps.

In his search for more volume, Dale and Leo Fender found out that the 10-watt amps just wouldn’t cut it. To remedy this problem, Fender created the first 85-watt transformer, which peaked at 100 watts. As Dale once said, “It was like going from a little VW Bug to a Testarossa.” The amp would later be called the Fender Showman; Dale could truly crank things up to 10. This was the first-ever 100-watt guitar amplifier!

An avid surfer, Dale began playing regular gigs at the Rendezvous Ballroom, a once-defunct concert venue near Newport Beach, with his backing band the Del-Tones; as word spread and gigs at other local halls followed, Dale became a wildly popular attraction, drawing 1,000s of fans to every performance. In September 1961, Del-Tone released Dale’s single “Let’s Go Trippin’,” which is generally acknowledged to be the very first recorded surf song.
Dick Dale and the Del-Tones have strings of hits: “Misirlou”, “Peppermint Man”, “Hava Nagila”, “Night Rider”, “Nitro”, “Esperanza”, “Riders In The Sky”, “Terra Dicktyl”, “Third Stone From The Sun” and “Jessie Pearl”.

Dick Dale and The Del-Tones performed the songs “My First Love,” “Runnin’ Wild” and “Muscle Beach” in the 1964 film, Muscle Beach Party.
The use of “Misirlou” in the 1994 Quentin Tarantino film Pulp Fiction gained him a new audience.

Dale has said that he has never used alcohol or other drugs and discourages their use by band members and road crew. In his early eighties, he still continues to tour.