Most of us associate surf music with the 1960s – the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, the Ventures, etc. But that trademark sound actually got its start in the late 1950s, when a young California surfer dude/musician named Dick Dale befriended guitarmaker Leo Fender.

Leo Fender had been designing guitars and amplifiers since 1950, when he introduced the first mass-produced solid-body electric guitar, the Broadcaster. He continued to tweak and fine-tune his design, and eventually came out with the Telecaster and Stratocaster. Fender gave one of his Stratocaster prototypes to his pal Dick Dale and then laughed when Dale began to strum the right-handed guitar upside down and backwards. Informed of his faux pas, Dale tried to spontaneously transpose his left-handed chords and came up with a unique guitar sound.

Fender also gave Dale one of his amplifiers, which Dale proceeded to blow up in short order. He did the same to subsequent, new and improved amplifiers. Fender finally asked him, “Why do you play so loud?” to which Dale replied that he was trying to give the guitar a “punchy” sound resembling the drum work of jazz great Gene Krupa. Fender went back to the drawing board and designed a higher-power, 85-watt unit that peaked at 100 watts when Dale cranked up his guitar all the way up. Dale was also unsatisfied with his vocal ability – his voice had no vibrato, and he didn’t like the way it sounded when he sustained a note. Leo came to the rescue once again and invented the Fender Tank Reverb, which eventually became a key element in the California “sound” of the Beach Boys and their surf music compadres.