A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs - Episode 107: “Surf City” by Jan and Dean

Episode Date: December 8, 2020

Episode 107 of A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs looks at “Surf City” and the career of Jan and Dean, including a Pop Symphony, accidental conspiracy to kidnap, and a career that both started and ended with attempts to get out of being drafted. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Hey Little Cobra” by the Rip Chords. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

A History of Rock Music in 500 songs by 100 Huck. Episode 107, Surf City, by Janand Dean. A warning about this episode. It features some discussion of a car crash and resulting disability and recovery, which may be upsetting to some people. Today, we're going to look at one of the most successful duos in rock and roll history, but one who have been relegated to a footnote because of their collaboration with a far more successful band, who had a similar sound to them.

We're going to look at Jan and Dean and at Surf City. The story of Jan and Dean begins with Jan and Arnie, and with the Barons. We discussed the Barons briefly in the episode on LSD 25, a few months ago, but only in passing. So to recap, the Barons were a singing group that formed at University High School in L.A. in the late 50s, centered around Jan Berry. Various people involved in the group's formation went on to be important parts of the L.A. music scene in the 60s. But by 1958, they were down to Barry and his friends, Arnie Ginsburg, not the DJ we talked about last episode, Dean Torrance and Don Altfeld. The group members all had a love for R&B, and hung around the band. with various of the black groups of the time.

Don Altfeld has talked about him and Barry being present, but not participating for Richard Berry's recording of Louis-Louis, though his memories of the time seemed confused in the interviews I've read. And Jan Berry, in particular, was a real music obsessive, and had what may have been the biggest R&B and rock and roll record collection in LA, which he obtained by scamming record companies, which seems to be very in character for him. He got a letterhead made up for a fake radio station, K Jan,

and wrote to every record company he could find asking for promo copies. He ended up getting six copies of every new release to play on the radio and would give some of the extra copies to his friends, and others he would use as frisbee's. According to Torrance, Barry would often receive 200 new records a day, all free. Berry had a reel-to-reel tape recorder belonging to his father. His father, William Berry, was important in the Howard Hughes organisation and had been in charge of the Spruce Goose Project,

even flying in the famous plane with Hughes, and Hughes had given him the tape recorder, which unlike almost all recording equipment available in the 50s, had a primitive reverb function built in. With that, and a microphone stolen from the school auditorium, Barry started recording himself and his friends, and he'd wanted to play one of the tapes he'd made as a party, so he'd taken it to a studio to be cut as an acetate, where it had been heard by Joe Lubin of Arwin Records, who took the tape and got session musicians to overdub it.

That record was released as by Jan and Darnie, rather than the Barron's. Dean Torrance was off doing six months in the army to get out of being conscripted later. Torrance has always said that he could hear himself on the recording and that it was one the Barons had done together. What everyone else involved has claimed that while the Barons did record a version of that song, the finished version only features Jan and Arnie's vocals. Don Altfeld didn't sing on it because he was never allowed to sing in the Barons. He was forced to just mouth along,

which given that both Jan and Dean were known for regularly singing flat, must say something about just how bad a singer he is, though he did apparently hit a metal chairleg as percussion on the record. Jenny Lee went to number three on the cashbox chart, number eight on Billboard, and was a big enough hit that it set a precedent for how all the records Jan Berry would be involved in for the next few years would be made. He would record vocals and piano in his garage with a ton of reverb,

and then the backing track would be recorded to that. usually by the same group of musicians that played on records by people like Sam Cuck, Richie Vellons and other late-50s L.A. singers, a group centred around Ernie Freeman on piano and organ, Renee Hall on guitar and Earl Palmer on drums. This was a completely backwards way of recording. Normally you'd have the musicians play the backing track first and then overdub the vocals on it,

but it was how they would carry on doing things for several years. Jan and Arnie's follow-up, Gas Money, written by Barry, Ginsberg and Altfeld, did less well, only making number 81 in the charts. And their third single didn't chart at all. By this point, Arnie Ginsburg was getting thoroughly sick of working with Jan Berry. Pretty much without exception, everyone who knew Barry in the 50s and early 60s

says two things about him, that he was the single most intelligent person they ever met, and that he was a domineering egomaniac who used anyone he could remorselessly. Jan and Arnie split up, and Arwin records seem to have decided to stick with Arney, rather than Jan, though this might have been because Arnie seemed less likely to have hits, as Dean Torrance has later claimed that Arwin was a tax dodge. It was owned by Marty Melcher, Doris Day's husband, and seems to have been used as much to get out of paying as much tax on the family's vast wealth

as it was as a real record label. Whatever the reason, though, Arnie made one more single, as the rituals, backed by many of the people who had played with the Barons, Bruce Johnston, Sandy Nelson, and Dave Shostack,

plus their regular collaborators, Mike Deasy, Richie Pallador, and Harper Cosby. It didn't chart. Dean Torrens, who had by now left the army, saw his chance, and soon Jan and Arney

had become Jan and Dean, after a brief phase in which it looked like they might persuade Dean to change his name, in order to avoid losing the group name. They hooked up with a new management's production team, Lou Adler and Herb Alpert, who had both been working at Keene Records with Sam Cuck. Kim Fowley later said that it was him who persuaded Adler to sign the duo, but Kim Fowley said a lot of things, very few of them true.

Adler and Alpert got the new duo signed to Dory Records, a small label based in LA, and their first release on the label was a cover version of a record originally by a group called The Laurels. Herb Alpert brought that song to the duo, and their version became a top ten hit, with Jan singing the low parts and Dean singing the lead. The hit was big enough that budget labels released sound-a-like cover versions of it, one of which was by a duo called Tom and Jerry, who had been one-hit wonders, year earlier.

That cover version was unsuccessful, something Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel were probably very grateful for when they reinvented themselves as sensitive frokeys a couple of years later. Around this time, Jan got his girlfriend pregnant. In order not to spoil their son's promising career, as well as being a single, he was also at university and planned to become a doctor. Jan's parents adopted his son and raised the boy as their own son. The duo went on a tour with Little Willie John, Bobby Day, and Little Richard's old backing band The Upsetters,

playing to mainly black audiences. A tour they were booked on because almost all West Coast do-wop at that time was from Black Singers. Once the mistake was realised, a decision was made to promote the new duo's image more. lots of photos of the very blonde, very white duo started to be released as a way to reassure the white audience. The duo's film star Good Looks assured them of regular coverage in the teen magazines,

but they didn't have any more hits on Dory. Of the seven singles they released in the two years after Baby Talk, none of them got to better than number 53 on the charts. Eventually the duo left Dory, and Jan released one solo single, Tomorrow's Teardrops. That was actually released as by Jan Barry rather than Jan Berry, at a point when the duo had actually split up. Dean was getting tired of not having any further hit records

and wanted to concentrate on his college work, while Barry was one of those people who needs to be doing several things simultaneously. Barry's new girlfriend, Jill Gibson, added backing vocals. By this time he dumped the one he got pregnant, and the song was written by Barry and Altfeld. Jan actually started his own label, Ripple Records, named after the brand of cheap wine, to release it, and Dean created the logo for him, the first of many he would create over the years. However, the duo soon reunited, and came up with a plan which would have them only touring during the summer break and doing local performances in the LA area on those weekends when neither had any homework. Now they needed to get signed to a major label.

The one they wanted was Liberty, the label that Eddie Cochran had been on, and whose owner, Sai Wamanka, was actually the cousin of the owners of Dory. And they had recorded a track that they were sure would get them signed to Liberty. The Marcells had recently had a hit with their do-wop revival of the old standard Blue Moon. Jan had decided to make a sound-like arrangement of another song from the same period, using the same chord changes, the old Hogi Carmichael song,

Heart and Soul. They were sure that would be a hit a hit, but Herb Alpert wasn't. He thought it was a dreadful record. He hated it so much, in fact, that he broke up his partnership with Lou Adler. The division of the partnership's assets was straightforward. They owned Janandine's contract,

and they owned a tape recorder. Alpert got the tape recorder, and Adler got Janandine. Alpert went on to have a string of hit records as a trumpet player, starting with The Lonely Bull in 1962. He later formed his own record label, A and M, and never seems to have regretted losing Jan and Dean.

Jan and Dean took their tape of Heart and Soul to Liberty Records, who said that they did want to sign Jan and Dean, but they didn't want to release a record like that. They told them to take it somewhere else, and then, when the single was a flop, they could come back to Liberty and make some proper records. So the duo got a two-record deal with the small label Challenge Records, on the understanding that after those two singles,

they would move on to Liberty, and heart and soul turned out to be a big hit, making number 25 on the charts. Their second single on Challenge only made number 104, but by this time they knew the drill. They'd released their first single on a new label, it would be a big hit, then everything after that would be a flop.

But they were going to a new label anyway, and they were sure their first single on Liberty Records would be a huge hit, just like every time they'd change. changed labels. The first record they put out on Liberty was a cover of another oldie, a Sunday Kind of Love, suggested by Cy Warenker's son Lenny, who will be hearing a lot more about in future episodes. By this point, Lou Adler was working for Aldon music as their West Coast representative, and so the track was credited as, produced by Lou Adler for Nevin's Kirshner,

but Jan was given a separate arrangement credit on the record. But despite their predictions that the single would be a hit because it was a new label. It only made number 94 on the charts. The follow-up, Tennessee, was a song which had been more or less forced on them. It was originally one of the recordings that Phil Spector produced during his short-lived contract with Liberty for a group called the Duke Keynes. But when the Duke Keynes made a hash of it, Liberty forced the song on Jan and Dean instead. By this time, while Ernie Freeman was still the studio leader of the session, musicians. Jan was requesting a rather larger group of musicians, and they'd started recording the backing tracks first. The musicians on Tennessee included Tommy Olsup and Jerry Allison

of the Crickets, Earl Palmer on drums, and Glenn Campbell on guitar. But even these proven hitmakers couldn't bring the song to more than number 69 on the charts. And even that was better than their next two singles, neither of which even made the Hot 100. Though the fact but by this point they were reduced to recording versions of Frosty the Snowman and attempting to recapture their first hit with a sequel called She's Still Talking Baby Talk, shows how desperately they were casting around for something, anything that could be a hit.

Eventually they found something that worked. A group called the Regents had recently had a hit with Barbara Ann. The duo had cut a cover version of that for their most recent album, and they thought it had worked well, and so they wanted something else that would allow Dean to sing a falsetto lead over a bass vocal by Jan with a girl's name in the title. They eventually hit on an old standard from the 1940s, originally written as a favour for the songwriter's lawyer, Lee Eastman,

about his then one-year-old daughter, Linda, who will be hearing more about later in this series. Their version of Linda finally gave them another hit after five flops in a row, reaching number 28 in the charts. Their career was on an upswing again, and then everything changed for them when they played a gig with support from a local band who had just started having hits, the Beach Boys.

The story goes that the Beach Boys were booked to do their own support slot, and then to back Jan and Dean on their set. The show went down well with the audience, and they wanted an encore, but Jan and Dean had run out of rehearsed songs, so they suggested that the Beach Boys play their own two sets, singles again, and Jan and Dean would sing with them. The group were flattered that two big stars

like Jan and Dean would want to perform their songs, and eagerly joined in. Suddenly, Jan and Dean had an idea. Their next album was going to be called Jan and Dean take Linda surfing, but as yet they hadn't recorded any surf songs. They invited the Beach Boys to come into the studio and record new versions of their two singles for Jan and Dean's album, with Jan and Dean singing the leads. life the only way for me now surf with me bong b'b-b-d-dip-d-dip b'bbbbbbb I got out this morning turned on my radio I was checking out the surfing scene to see if I would go and then the DJ tells me that the surfing is fine that's when I know my baby and I will have a good time I'm going

The Beach Boys weren't credited for that session, as they were signed to another label, but it started a long collaboration between the two groups. In particular, the Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson became a close collaborator with Berry, and at that same session, Wilson gave Jan and Dean what would become their biggest hit. After the recording, Jan and Dean asked Wilson if he had any new songs they might be. able to do. The first one he played them, Surfing USA, he told them they couldn't do anything with, as he wanted that for the Beach Boys themselves, but then he played them two others. The one that Jan and Dean saw most potential in was a song he'd completed, Gonna Hustle You.

The duo wanted that as their next single, but Liberty Records flat out refused to put out something that sounded so dirty as going to hustle you. They tried to rewriting it as get a chance with you, but even that was too much. They put the song aside, though they'd return to it later as the new girl in school, which would become a minor hit for them. Instead, they worked on a half-completed song that Wilson had started, very much in the same mould as the first two Beach Boys singles, with the provisional title, Goody Connie Won't You Please Come Home. This song would become the first of many Janandine songs for which the songwriting credit is disputed. No one argues with the fact that the basic idea of the song was Brian

Wilson's, but Jan Berry's process was to get a lot of people to throw ideas in, sometimes working in a group, sometimes working separately and not even knowing that other people had been involved. The song is officially credited to Wilson and Berry, but Don Altfeld has also claimed he contributed to it. Dean Torrance says that he wrote about a quarter of the lyrics, and it's also been suggested that Roger Christian wrote the lyrics to the first verse. Christian was an LA area DJ who was obsessed with cars, and had come to Wilson's attention after he'd said on the air that the Beach Boys 409 was a great song about a bad car.

He'd started writing songs with Wilson, and he would also collaborate with both Jan Berry and Wilson's friend Gary Usher, who was a big part of this scene, but hardly ever worked with Jan and Dean, because he hated Jan. Almost every car song from this period by the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, or any number of studio groups was co-written by Christian

and we'll be hearing more about him in a future episode. This group of people, Jan and Dean, Brian Wilson, Roger Christian and Don Altfeld would write together in various combinations and write a lot of hits. But a lot of the credits were assigned more or less randomly,

though Jan Berry was almost always credited and Dean Torrance almost never was. The completed song, titled Surf City, was recorded with members of the wrecking crew, the studio musicians who usually work with Phil Spector, performing the backing track. In this case, these were Hal Blaine, Glenn Campbell, Earl Palmer, Bill Pittman, Ray Pullman and Billy Strange.

There were two drummers because Barry liked a big drum sound. Brian Wilson was at the session, and soon after this he started using. some of those musicians himself. While it was released as a Jan and Dean record, Dean doesn't sing on it at all. The vocals featured Jan, three singers from another Liberty Records group

called The Jent, and Brian Wilson, with Wilson and Tony Minichello of the Jent's singing the falsetto parts that Dean would sing live. That went to number one, becoming Jan and Dean's only number one, and Brian Wilson's first,

much to the fury of Wilson's father Murray, who thought that Wilson's hit should only be going to the Beach Boys. Murray Wilson may well have been more bothered by the fact that the publishing for the song went to Columbia Screen Gems, to whom Jan was signed, rather than to Sea of Tunes, the company that published Wilson's other songs and which was owned by Murray himself. Murray started calling Jan a pirate, which prompted Barry to turn up to a beach boy's session

wearing the full pirate costume to taunt Murray. From Linda on, Jan and Dean had ten. 10 top 40 hits with 10 singles. One of the B-Sides also charted, but they did miss with Here They Come from All Over the World. The theme tune for the Tammy Show, a classic rock concert film on which Jan and Dean appeared both as singers and as the hosts.

That was by far their weakest single from this period, being as it is just a list of the musicians in the show, some of them described incorrectly. The song talks about the Rolling Stones from Liverpool and James Brown being the king of the blues. All of these hits were made by the same team. The wrecking crew would play the instruments. The gents, now renamed the Matadors,

and sometimes the blossoms would provide backing vocals on the earlier singles. The later ones would feature the fantastic baggies instead of the Matadors, two young songwriters, Steve Barry and P.F. Sloan, who were also making their own surf records. The lead would be sung by Jan, the falsetto by some combination of Brian Wilson, Dean Torrance, Tony Minichello and P.F. Sloan. Often Dean wouldn't appear at all. The singles would be written by some combination of Wilson, Barry, Outfold and Christian,

and the songs would be about the same subjects as the Beach Boys Records. Surf, cars, girls, or some combination of the three. Sometimes the records would be just repetitions of the formula, like Drag City, which was an attempt at a second surf city. But often there would be a self-paradic element that wasn't present in the Beach Boys singles, as in The Little Old Lady from Pasadena, a car song written by Barry Christian and Altfeld,

based on a series of Dodge commercials featuring a car racing old lady, and the grotesque Dead Man's Curve. Equal parts a serious attempt at a theme tragedy song and a parody of the genre, which took on a new meaning a few years after it was ahead. The last thing I remember, Doc, I started to swerve, and then I saw the jag slide into the curve. I know I'll never forget that horrible sight.

I guess I found out for myself that everyone was right. But while 1963 and 64 saw the duo rack up an incredible run of hits, they were making enemies. Jan was so unpleasant to people by this point that even the teen mags would call him out, with Teen Seen in March 1964, running an article which read, in part, Blast of the Month goes to half of a certain group whose initials are J&D. Reason for the Blast, his personality,

which makes enemies faster than Carter makes pills. It's the Jan half. Acting like Mr Big Bridges gets you nowhere, and your poor partner, who is one of the nicest guys on Earth, shouldn't be forced to go around making apologies for your actions. And while Torrance may have been one of the nicest, guys on earth. Not all of his friends were. In fact, in December 1963, his closest friend, Barry Keenan, was the ringleader in the kidnapping of

Frank Sinatra Jr. Keenan told Torrance about the plan in advance, and Torrance had lent Keenan a great deal of money, which Keenan used to finance the kidnapping. Torrance was accused of being a major part of the plot, though he was let off after testifying against the people who were actually involved. He's always claimed that he thought that his friend talking about his plan for the perfect crime was just talk, not a serious plan. Torrance had even offered suggestions, jokingly, which Keenan had incorporated, and Keenan had left a bag containing $50,000 at Torrance's home, Torrance's share of the ransom money, which Torrance refused to keep.

However, Sinatra Senior was annoyed enough at Torrance that a lot of plans for Janandine TV shows and film appearances suddenly dried up. The lack of TV and film appearances was a particular problem as the music industry was changing under them, and surf and hot rod records weren't the end thing anymore, and Brian Wilson seems to have been less interested in working with them as well, as the Beach Boys overtook Janandine in popularity. 1965 saw them trying to figure out the new, more serious music scene,

with experiments like Pop Symphony No. 1, an album of orchestral arrangements of the duo's hits by Barry, who minored in music at UCLA, and George Tipton. The duo also tried going folk rock, releasing an album called Folken Roll, which featured another variation on the Surf City and Drag City theme, this one, Folk City. That album didn't do well at all,

not least because the lead-off single was a pro-war protest song, released as a Jam Berry solo single. Berry had become incensed by Buffy St. Marie's song, the Universal Soldier, and had written a right-wing response, the Universal Coward. As you can imagine, that was not popular with the folk rock crowd, especially coming as it did from someone who was still managing to avoid the draft by studying Redson, even as he was also a pop star.

Torrance became so irritated with Barry, and with the music they were making during the recording of that album, that he ended up going down the hall to another studio, where the Beach Boys were recording their unplugged party album and sitting in with them. He suggested they do a new recording of Barbara Ann, and he sang lead on it, uncredited. That went to number two on the charts,

becoming the biggest hit record that Torrance ever sang on. Torrance was happier with the next project, though, an album spoofing the popular TV show Batman, with several comedy sketches, along with songs about the characters from the TV show. But by this point, in 1966, Jan and Dean's singles were doing absolutely nothing in the charts. In March, Liberty Records dropped them,

and then on April 12, 1966, something happened that would end their chances of another comeback. Jan Berry had been in numerous accidents over the previous few years. He was a thrill seeker, and would often end up crashing cars or breaking bones. On April the 12th, he had an appointment at the draft board, at which he was given bad news. Depending on which account you read, he was either told that his draft deferment was coming to an end and he was going to Vietnam straight away, or that he was going to Vietnam as soon as he graduated

from medical school at the end of the school year. He was furious, and he got into his car. What happened next has been the subject of some debate. Some people say that a wheel came off his car, and some have hinted that this was the result of some of Sinatra's friends getting revenge on Jan and Dean. Others just say he was driving carelessly, which he often did. Some have suggested that he was trying to deliberately get into a minor accident to avoid being drafted. Whatever happened, he was involved in a major accident, in which he, though luckily no one else, was severely injured. He spent a month in a coma and came out of it severely brain damaged. He had to re-learn to read and speak,

and for the rest of his life would have problems with his memory, his physical coordination and his speech. Liberty kept releasing old Jan and Dean tracks, and even got them a final top 20 hit with Popsicle, a song from a few years earlier. Dean made the Jan and Dean album, saved for a rainy day, without Jan, while Jan was recovering,

as a way of trying to keep their career options open if Jan ever got better. Dean put it out on the duo's name. new label, J&D, and there were plans for Columbia to pick it up and give it a wider release, but Jan refused to sign the contract. He was furious that Dean had made a John and Dean record without him and would have nothing to do with it. Torrance tried to have a music career anyway. He put out a cover of the Beach Boys song Vegetables under the name The Laughing Gravy. But he soon gave up and became an artist, designing covers and logos for people like Harry Nelson

canned heat, the turtles and the Beach Boys. Jan tried making his own Jan and Dean album without Dean, even though he was unable to sing again or write yet. With a lot of help from Roger Christian, he pulled together some old half-finished songs and finished them, got in some sound-like session singers and famous friends like Glenn Campbell and Davy Jones of the Monkeys, and put together Carnival of Sound,

an album that didn't get released until 2010. In the mid-70s, Jan and Dean got back together and started touring the nostalgia circuit, spurred by a TV movie Dead Man's Curve, based on their lives. There seemed to be a love-hate relationship between them in later years. They would split up and get back together, and their roles had reversed, with Dean now taking most of the leads on the shows. Dean had to look after Jan a lot of the time, and some reports said that Jan had to re-learn the words to the three songs

he sang lead on every night. But with the aid of some excellent backing musicians, and with some love and tolerance from the audience for Jan's ongoing problems, they managed to regularly please crowds of thousands until a few weeks before Jan's death in 2004.

Since then, Dean has mostly performed with the Surf City All-Stars, a band that sometimes also features Al Jardine and David Marks of the Beach Boys, playing a few shows a year. He released an autobiography in 2016, It came out at the same time as the autobiographies of Brian Wilson and Mike Love of the Beach Boys, ensuring that even at this late date, he would be overshadowed by his more famous colleagues.

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