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Sep 30, 2010 Web Exclusive By Nate Daly

With at least a half-dozen “best of” compilations dedicated to collecting Dick Dale’s red hot guitar licks, do we need another? Probably not, but I certainly welcome any chance to reacquaint myself with one of the most incredible and influential guitarists of all time. King of the Surf Guitar. Inventor of surf music. Blah blah blah… The mainstream surf music craze only lasted about three years, yet here is Dick Dale, 73 years old and still touring (although his August 2010 tour of Japan was canceled due to health reasons) with his amplifiers turned up past 10. Dale’s guitar playing is so much more than surf rock. He brought Eastern European melodies to guitar melodies and American popular music decades before they would become standard heavy metal fare. He turned up his amplifiers so loud that he would frequently destroy them—he played one of the loudest club shows I’ve ever witnessed—and became a guinea pig for Leo Fender to test amps on.

Dale is a legend, but what does this compilation deliver that you can’t find on an earlier comp, such as Rhino’s essential 1989 comp King of the Surf Guitar: The Best of Dick Dale? Shout! Factory’s Guitar Legend is more a career retrospective, so in addition to “Miserlou,” “Let’s Go Trippin’,” “Surfing Drums,” and “Mr. Eliminator,” we also get 2002’s homage to the Marine Corps with “HMFIC,” Dale’s “Pipeline” duet with the late Stevie Ray Vaughn from 1987, and two cuts from the 1993 album Tribal Thunder, “Esperanza” and “Nitro.”

This compilation is a splendid introduction for neophytes, but more importantly a reminder to the already converted that Dale is still around and still playing incendiary live shows (with his son Jimmy on drums). Catch him while you can. (www.shoutfactory.com)

Author rating: 6/10