Dick Dale dead at 82

[Dave (in MA)]

The King of surf just rode out on his final wave...RIP DD

https://guitar.com/news/dick-dale-dead-at-82/

Apparently the age correction caused guitar.com to change their URL and thereby create a 404.

https://guitar.com/news/dick-dale-dead-at-81/

[TheLoony]

Don't know if this is true but came across this on another board.

There are quite a lot of lefty's that play like this (plain strings on top and fat strings at the bottom).

A few names you may recognize that play guitars strung in this manner include Albert King, Bobby Womack, Otis Rush, Coco Montoya, Glen Burtnick, and Doyle Bramhall II. Bassist Jimmy Haslip plays bass like this too.

Guess I'll have to go watch some videos of DD. I've heard quite a few songs of his over the years but never seen him actually play.

[GuitarGeek]

Don't know if this is true but came across this on another board.

There are quite a lot of lefty's that play like this (plain strings on top and fat strings at the bottom).

A few names you may recognize that play guitars strung in this manner include Albert King, Bobby Womack, Otis Rush, Coco Montoya, Glen Burtnick, and Doyle Bramhall II. Bassist Jimmy Haslip plays bass like this too.

.

Yes, it's true all of those musicians play with the guitars strung "upside down". So did Elizabeth Cotton. It actually makes perfect sense. Given the relative scarcity of left handed designed guitars, the odds that a southpaw guitarist would end up with an instrument designed for a right handed player are ridiculously high.
If you're a self taught musician, who "doesn't know any better", you might have that right handed instrument and think "What happens if I just flip it over, and play it that way?" and you go from there.

Now, some southpaws learn how to play righty. That includes Mark and David Knopfler, Rik Emmett, Steve Morse and myself (see what I did there?). Emmett said he started off playing lefty, but his first teacher told him to play righty because it'd be easier, or some such. Both Emmett and Morse have said they feel it was to their advantage because the stronger hand is on the fingerboard. Maybe that's why those guys who can play so blazingly fast! But from what I gather, that doesn't work for everyone.

For the record, there are those who swear Jimi Hendrix could play any guitar both left and right handed style, regardless of how it was strung. I think it was Al Kooper who said he Jimi pick up a guitar in the studio and play it right handed style, just as fluently as any other time he heard Jimi play. But most of the time, certainly in the video footage we have of him, Jimi strung his guitar correctly, i.e. he had his flipped over right handed guitars restrung so that the high E is closest to the floor.

For what it's worth, after I saw Doyle Bramhall II play with Roger Waters in 1999, I tried flipping the strings around on my Strat. They were out of tune, because I didn't reverse the bridge saddles, but I left it that way for about a week. One thing I noticed was a twangier sound on the wound strings, which I believe is the result of the longer length of string behind the nut in that case (supposedly, that's one of the "secrets" of Jimi's guitar tone, at least, in live recordings, anyway). And I found chords and riffs to be a lot easier to play than I thought it would be. About the only thing I couldn't play was a Chuck Berry rhythm, and soloing. Having the strings reversed somehow messed up my ability to improvise melodically, as it somehow destroyed my view of the fingerboard. But it was an interesting experiment. I believe I read Stevie Ray Vaughan talked about having a couple guitars set up like that, because he was trying to get closer to the Albert King vibe.

If you're wondering "Why not just get a left handed guitar", it's because 99% instruments you see in any music store (or back in the day, in the JC Penney/Montgomery Ward/Sears catalogs, which is where many of our parents got our first guitars from) are right handed. If you wanted a particular model in a left handed configuration, you typically have to special order it, pay a premium (there's a music store called Southpaw Guitars that charges a 10% premium for right handed guitars, or at least that's what they used to say in their ads in Guitar Player), and you couldn't get a lot of the options that are available on the right handed instruments (say if you wanted one with a tremolo system, or one in whichever custom colour, you might not be able to get that).

There was an article in Guitar Player back in 1980 or 1981, I believe, where they talked about some of the aggravation that left handed guitarists go through, and one thing was being able to get instruments at all. Elliott Easton told of trying to order an electric 12 string (he didn't name the manufacturer), saying that he put in a deposit at a dealership, then after 6 months, apparently, the company told the dealer to "give the kid his money back, because we can't do it". I mean, it took the company 6 months to figure to decide they weren't gonna follow through?!

The explanation I heard for why Jimi Hendrix played right handed instruments was he reckoned the quality on the left handed guitasr wouldn't be as good, because they were built one at a time, as they were ordered, and he felt maybe the craftsmanship wouldn't be as good.

And for what it's worth, at least during the 80's (I don't know about now), Rickenbacker offered, as a custom order option, left handed guitars that were strung upside down.

[GuitarGeek]

I've always contended that all instrumental surf music is a variation of "Hava Nageela."

Well, a lot of it was based off Dick Dale's influence, and Dick was into Arabic music, so your logic isn't too far off the mark.

You can also throw in the "spy movie" thing, e.g. the James Bond theme, as they seem to rely heavily on altered scales similar to what's found in Arabic music. I remember Guitar Player running an article on "spy movie guitar" where they detailed which scales you should experiment in to get that sound.

As a side note, if you listen to early Pink Floyd, it sounds like Rick Wright must have been listening to a lot of Middle Eastern music too, judging from his organ solos on the early recordings.

[The Dark Elf]

Well, a lot of it was based off Dick Dale's influence, and Dick was into Arabic music, so your logic isn't too far off the mark.

Dale's father was Lebanese (Dale's real last name was Mansour). His uncle, a musician, taught Dale to play the tarabaki and the oud. Hence, the old Middle-eastern song Misirlou (Dale ended up spelling the title Miserlou).

[GuitarGeek]

Dale's father was Lebanese (Dale's real last name was Mansour). His uncle, a musician, taught Dale to play the tarabaki and the oud.

See post #21.

[Zeuhlmate]

Uffe Steen plays a left handed guitar with the strings strung "upside down"



You can see it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a30ThNCrEek

[ledsox]

Speaking of lefty guitarist, next time you hear Hendrix' "Third Stone from the Sun", listen for the Dick Dale tribute, "you'll never hear surf music again".
He wasn't mocking the genre. Jimi had heard that Dick was very sick and might be dying so he put this line in.

RIP Mr Dale.