RIP Dick Dale

[ryoder 1,384]

https://www.npr.org/2019/03/18/704329806/dick-dale-surf-guitar-legend-dead-at-81

You probably never heard of him unless you are old enough to have been into surf-rock in the 1960's, but you've probably heard this as a movie theme:

 

[dudeman17 270]

I was saddened when I saw this on the news last night.

 

Many years ago, probably late 80's - early 90's, there was an extreme sports expo held at a lakeside resort over a 3-day weekend, with vendor booths promoting dirt bikes, jet skis, that sort of thing, and a buddy and I ran a booth promoting our dropzone. Dick Dale was the entertainment, playing sets on Saturday and Sunday nights. Absolutely shredded, and if I remember correctly, he played his guitar upside down and backwards, like Jimi Hendrix did. He befriended us, and my buddy and I hung out with him and his wife all weekend. Genuinely nice, down to earth people. I still have a hat that he gave us. He lived on a ranch in Twentynine Palms that had its own airstrip, and he even invited us to organize a skydiving boogie there. But he was many years clean and sober and said no drugs or alcohol would be tolerated on his property, so out of respect we didn't even try to organize it.

 

Talented performer, class act. A great loss to the music world.

[ryoder 1,384]

Here Dick is playing a left-handed guitar, but if you watch through the song you see that he has it strung like a right-handed guitar. i.e. the Low-E string is at the bottom of the fretboard, instead of at the top. This is obvious at 2:40:

 

[dudeman17 270]

Geez, it's hard to rely on the details of 30 year old memories, but now that I watch that and think about it, I seem to remember him saying something about starting out on flipped-over right hand guitars, and when he got left handed ones he was used to the strings that way, so that's how he strung 'em.