Saturday Night at the Oldies Deferred: Dick Dale, King of the Surf Guitar

Last night's desert storm knocked out my Internet connection . . . .

Before the Beach Boys, who debuted 50 years ago in '62, there was Dick Dale, the father of surf music and my first guitar hero.  He took a Fender Stratocaster and played it upside down and backwards, fretting with this right hand and plucking with his left.  The first surf song was his 1961

Let's Go Trippin. But what really got me practicing on my Fender Mustang, my first electric guitar, was

Misirlou.  The Del-Tones in this video ought to be renamed 'The Soporific Sidemen.'  Here is the "Pulp Fiction" version. Continuing in the Middle Eastern vein:

Hava Nagila.  Surfing, So Cal, and hot rods naturally go together.  So surf music gradually morphed into car music, e.g.,

Nitro.  Dale teams up with the rather more versatile and technically proficient Stevie Ray Vaughan (who merely plays his guitar without raping it) for absolutely the best version of The Chantay's

Pipeline.  Psychedelia put an end to surf music.  The epitaph "You will never hear surf music again" is delivered by Jimi Hendrix at 4:33 of

Third Stone From the Sun.