CRYSTAL BAY and#8212; The Dick Dale Phenomenon. His style is something unique. Since his first appearances at the famed Rendezvous Ballroom, he has set and broken attendance records everywhere he's performed. His appearances at the Rendezvous Ballroom broke every existing record for the ballroom by drawing capacity crowds of more than 4,000 screaming, dancing fans every weekend each night down on the Balboa peninsula.
Dick Dale invented surf music in the 1950s and#8212; not the 1960s, as is commonly believed. He was given the title "King of the Surf Guitar" by his fellow surfers, who he surfed with from sunup to sundown. He met Leo Fender, the guitar and amplifier Guru, and Leo asked Dale to play his new creation, the Fender Stratocaster Electric Guitar. The minute Dale picked up the guitar, Leo Fender broke into uncontrolled laughter and disbelief; he was watching Dale play a right-handed guitar upside down and backward. Dale was playing a right-handed guitar left-handed and changing the chords in his head then transposing the chords to his hands to create a sound never heard before.
Leo Fender gave the Fender Stratocaster, along with a Fender Amp, to Dale and told him to beat it to death and tell him what he thought of it. Dale took the guitar and started to beat it to death, and he blew up Leo Fender's amp and blew out the speaker. Dale proceeded to blow up 49 amps and speakers; they would actually catch on fire. Leo would say, and#8220;Dick, why do you have to play so loud?and#8221; Dale explained that he wanted to create the sound of Gene Krupa, the famous jazz drummer who created the sounds of the native dancers in the jungles along with the roar of mother nature's creatures and the roar of the ocean.
Dale was also responsible for another creation to the world of guitar players, and#8220;The Fender Tank Reverb.and#8221; As Dale sang in his shows, he found that he did not have a vibrato in his voice and he did not like the straight flat dry sound. to sustain his vocal notes, he turned to an old Hammond organ and found a reverb unit and showed it to Leo Fender and together they came up with the and#8220;Fender Tank Reverb.and#8221; Dale then plugged a Shure Dynamic Bird cage Microphone into it and as Dale sang, his voice took on a very rich, sexy and full sound. Later, Dale then plugged his Fender Stratocaster guitar into the Reverb Tank to sustain his guitar notes which became Dale's trademark sound.
