Dave Myers & the Surftones

The consistent quality of Del-Fi’s releases never ceases to amaze me. Here’s another quality collection, this time featuring 12 songs from the 1963 album Hang Twenty, plus DM&TS’ two contributions to the Del-Fi compilation, KFWB Battle Of The Surfing Bands, which came out in the same summer. The young Dave Myers, a music major at Orange Coast College, was inspired to start a surf band after happening upon a performance by the self-proclaimed King of the Surf Guitar, Dick Dale, at a local club. He recruited five of his friends (four of them also music majors), and called them the Surftones in an homage to Dale’s band the Del-Tones. Given the fact that most everyone was a music major, the fact that the musicianship is very good is not that astounding, but I am amazed that everyone was only around 19 years old when this was made. This is classic surf music, featuring the frenetic double-picking guitar style of Dale, and effective complementary use of the saxophone. Myers ditched the surf genre when it went out of vogue, but I am sure glad he was into it for a while, because this is one good album.