Featured Artist: Jan & Deanâs Beach Party starring Dean Torrence
Surf City, here we come!
Calling all Gidgets and Moondoggies to join the non-stop fun at Jan & Dean’s Beach Party, the ultimate blast from the sun ’n’ surf-soaked past, on the 2014 Malt Shop Memories Cruise.
Leading the Beach Party is none other than the Big Kahuna himself, the legendary innovator of the California Surf Invasion sound, Dean Torrence. Together with the Surf City Allstar Band (featuring musicians from The Beach Boys’ band and The Ventures), Dean will rock with all of his hits and more.
Jan & Dean started their career while still in high school, just a few miles from the sun-drenched beaches that they sang so vividly about. Their first single, “Baby Talk,” hit the Top 10 in 1959, and fans fell hard for the duo. “Heart And Soul” and “Linda” followed into the Top 30. And then, a hot new band known as The Beach Boys opened for Jan & Dean, changing the sound of pop music forever.
Within days of that fateful concert, Jan Berry, Dean Torrence and Beach Boy Brian Wilson were making plans to collaborate on two tracks for Jan & Dean’s latest album. They also finished off a song begun by Brian: one that would propel J&D’s career into the stratosphere.
“Surf City” was an instant smash, exploding onto Billboard magazine’s Hot 100 in mid-June 1963 and racing to No. 1 in six weeks. Jan & Dean — along with The Beach Boys, who’d just racked up their second Top 20 smash with “Surfin’ U.S.A.” — had given the new craze a voice, literally, since previous surf singles had been instruments-only affairs.
Later that year the two groups further cemented the popularity of the sun-baked sound when Jan & Dean’s “Honolulu Lulu” followed The Boys’ “Surfer Girl” up the charts.
While Berry and Wilson enjoyed friendly competition on the airwaves and the pop charts, behind the scenes the two continued to collaborate and help the exciting surf sound evolve to new heights. In the autumn of 1962, The Beach Boys had put out “409” as the flip side of “Surfin’ Safari,” creating a drag racing-themed, sub-genre of rock ’n’ roll. After several follow-up B-sides — “Shut Down” and “Little Deuce Coupe” — made strong chart showings, Jan & Dean traded their surf gear for hot rods. Berry, Wilson and radio deejay Roger Christian came up with “Drag City,” and the race was on.
“Dead Man’s Curve” was an operatic tour de force of honking horns, swooping car sound effects, and a rock ’n’ roll choir. Peaking at No. 8 on the Hot 100, two positions higher than “Drag City,” “Dead Man’s Curve” became Jan & Dean’s first two-sided hit single when “The New Girl in School” rose to No. 37. In the summer of 1964, Jan & Dean achieved a hot rod trifecta as “The Little Old Lady (From Pasadena)” became —- at No. 3 — their biggest hit since “Surf City.” Jan & Dean returned to the beach for their next A-side — “Ride The Wild Surf” — the theme for a movie starring Fabian and Shelley Fabares.
The duo rode the surf craze wave one last time with the earthbound “Sidewalk Surfin’” in late 1964, singing new lyrics to Brian Wilson’s melody for The Beach Boys’ 1963 album track “Catch a Wave.” (That’s the sound of Jan’s skateboard cruising the cement on the intro.)
In October 1964, the pair hosted a series of concerts at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, naturally just a stone’s throw from the beach, which featured the day’s top acts, from The Beach Boys to James Brown and The Rolling Stones. A film released as “The T.A.M.I. Show” provided a firsthand look at Jan & Dean’s unique wit and went on to become an iconic rock ’n’ roll concert film.
And Dean kept collaborating with The Beach Boys, even singing lead vocals on their “Barbara Ann,” which hit No. 2 on the pop charts in January of 1966.
Not content to be just rock ’n’ roll stars, Jan & Dean were by then college students as well, Jan at the California College of Medicine and Dean at the USC School of Architecture, where he earned a BFA in advertising design.
The future looked unbelievably bright for Jan & Dean on the morning of April 12, 1966, when the just-turned-25-year-old Jan slid behind the wheel of his Corvette. Not far from the infamous real-life Dead Man’s Curve, he suffered a devastating car accident, spending over two months in a coma before beginning his long, slow road to recovery.
Dean stood by his friend and musical partner, lobbying the executives at Liberty Records to release more Jan & Dean material, including a 1963 recording — “Popsicle" — which became their best-charting single since "Ride The Wild Surf."
Jan struggled valiantly to recover, eventually releasing four solo singles between 1972 and 1976. In June of ’76, Jan & Dean took to the stage at the Palomino Club in North Hollywood for their first live performance since the accident. A 1978 CBS prime time television movie based on their careers brought them back into the spotlight and the duo made an official comeback, hitting the road with longtime friends The Beach Boys for the Surfin’ Déjà Vu Tour. Jan & Dean performed together from then on until just three weeks before Jan’s death on March 26, 2004.
Dean picked up the Jan & Dean torch and is still keeping their summer music spirit alive with his wildly popular Jan & Dean Beach Party shows.
Check out Jan & Dean's award winning website, designed by Dean by the way, at: www.jananddean.com
“We’re going to bring our world-famous California surf to the Caribbean,” promises Torrence. “I’ll be performing Jan & Dean’s biggest hits along with (many other Classic California songs recorded by our old friends, The Beach Boys). So many of these songs we all love are from the greatest era in pop music history. Everyone on the Malt Shop Memories Cruise is in for some ‘fun, fun, fun!’”
Book your cabin and join Dean on 2014 Malt Shop Memories Cruise.