1960s Car Songs

admin · Post by **admin** » Mon Jul 11, 2005 11:22 pm

It is difficult to discuss Beach Boys' material before the topic of Cars comes up. My stereotype of most surf songs is that they usually shift gear to a car discussion. Is car music just surf sounds with an engine thrown in? What are your favourite and earliest memories of car songs?

karl_teten · Post by **karl_teten** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 12:36 am

My dad is in his 70's and grew up in the East Texas piney woods. Dad liked (still does) his honky-tonk.

I remember listening to songs like Thunder Road, Hot Rod Lincoln, 90 Miles An Hour (Down A Dead End Street)....

My first Beach Boys album was 'Spirit of America' (Hit's Vol II) back in '75. 409 and Custom Machine were on that compilation. I remember going to buy the LP with my mother at 'Two Guys' in Torrance, CA, just a few miles from where the Wilson's grew up.

admin · Post by **admin** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 1:21 am

Little Deuce Coupe and 409 were some of my early Beach Boy favourites.

The Beatles Drive My Car is also a favourite although the content is not about cars really.

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 2:32 am

My surf band "The Surfbards" did 409. It was one of our most popular numbers in live shows. We began to lengthen it with an extended surf-style instrumental jam, and then I (at age 17) wrote some extra verses to give the kids more time to dance. One original verse went like this:

She's my one and only, she's my one of a kind
(Giddy up, giddy up 409)
Her candy apple paint job sure does shine
(Giddy up. etc.)
She's my wailin', windin', winnin' 409!

(Note the reference in line 3 to Zymol, two decades before it was even invented...)

Imagine how the Beach Boys felt back in late '63. A year and a half before, they had been pimply, gawky kids...only Dennis had any limited success with girls...Carl was still carrying his baby fat. Brian, though he played sports in high school, had been out of high school for a couple of years and was a sporadic attendee at a local junior college and walked with a peculiar pigeon-toed gait. Mike Love (ugh) had been a gas station attendant.

Then-boom! Two hits and two albums in quick sensation. Suddenly, 144th Street in Hawthorne (which didn't even have sidewalks back then...) had four brand new GM cars parked in front of 5522. Of course, Dennis had bought a beautiful Daytona Blue '63 split window Corvette. Brian had purchased a Nocturne Blue '63 Pontiac Grand Prix. He took some grief for this choice--the GP was considered an old man's car at the time. The cars are pictured, of course, on the cover of their March '64 "Shut Down Volume 2" album. "Shut Down" had been a massive hit during the summer of '63. Everybody wanted more car songs. So when "SDV2" came out, everyone rushed to buy it...and found out the song was a friggin' instrumental! Oh, well, Capitol marketing scores another one.

I also remember receiving the album for my 16th birthday from my cousin. It started my lifelong fascination with California music and culture and led to my founding the Surfbards and eventually moving to Los Angeles in 1979. The BBs looked the essence of Californian cool to my 16 year old eyes.

I look at that cover now and see a bunch of high-school and college-aged kids trying to look hip. Carl and Dennis both have cool pompadour hairstyles. Brian looks like he got caught in a downpour. Mike Love is already going bald--at age 22!

But in landlocked Chicago, we spent a lot of time attempting to get our hair to look that way (parents and teachers wouldn't go for the Beatle stuff, so it was modified pompadours for all...)

wmthor · Post by **wmthor** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 2:42 am

"Fun, Fun, Fun" with it's intro riff is probably my favorite car song. Now if I could play it the way they did.

rictified · Post by **rictified** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 4:28 am

I always thought it was different, I'm not crazy about surf music but I love car music. I associate Dick Dale and instrumentals with surf and The Beach Boys and vocals with car music even though I know some of their best stuff was about surfing, like Surfer Girl etc. Instrumeantl surf bands put me to sleep after a while and I get sick of playing it after a while also. My earliest memories are stull like Bucket T, Jan and Dean and 409, Little Deuce Coupe etc. Beach Boys.
I have always loved the cover of the LP, the Grand Prix and the Vett. Incidently you could get a 421, 4 speed, positraction, dual quad 405 HP (sounds like a song) Grand Prix back then, I don't think that's a grampy car.
I loved Little GTO when it was a hit.

"The Surfbards" nothing like an intellectual surfer, haha!

shamustwin · Post by **shamustwin** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 4:41 am

Brian has said they'd put out their surf songs on the "A" sides, then put a car song on the "B" sides, so the kids not living on the coasts could have a song to identify with. As a California boy, I was crazy about them both!

admin · Post by **admin** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 4:55 am

Great memories guys, but saying "giddy up to a 409" was always a bit curious. Is that similar to like to "putting your horse in gear?"

A wonderful time, no matter what the words.

Don't forget Little Honda, Little Old Lady From Pascedena and Dead Man's Curve, the good the bad and the ugly. Go granny go granny go granny go! The trials and tribulations of tearing along the dotted line.

revolver323 · Post by **revolver323** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 5:20 am

"Fun Fun Fun" has the best bass line .. first time I realized that the bass could go somewhere other than I/V

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 7:20 am

Dead Man's Curve really exists on Sunset Boulevard near where I once lived in LA. It's a 4-lane, very fast, blind, reverse-camber curve. This story of how it got its name is from James Bacon, movie writer:

Apparently Red Skelton (who the public thought was a harmless clown of a guy) threw some pretty wild parties in his Bel Air house (incidentally not far from Brian Wilson's old purple palace on Bellagio Way), which was on a hill above the curve. He would assemble his guests on folding chairs and they would watch "stag films" (this was 1961, don't forget) which his projectionist would screen on a garage door across Sunset, right on the curve, so that westbound traffic could see the image on the door. An accident ensued that night, involving Mel Blanc, voice of Bugs Bunny, who survived with serious injuries. Hence the name.

Sadly, the song almost came true as Jan Berry (who passed away last year) ran his StingRay into the back of a flatbed truck on April 12, 1966, nearly killing him and causing him lifelong brain damage and partial paralysis. "Popsicle Truck" was released in the summer of '66 in an effort to keep the hits going out, but they faded after that. Jan was a real trouper, though, and continued to tour even though he often forgot the lyrics to his own songs on stage, which became a running gag at his own insistence.

admin · Post by **admin** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 7:43 am

Interesting history. Thanks for the brief tour of LA Paul.

You have reminded me of a number of groups that used models as their band names. The Impalas, The El Dorados, The Edsels, The Cadillacs and I am sure there must be many more.

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 8:06 am

The Impalas are notable for having the first-ever 45 rpm record recorded and released in stereo, "Sorry" (I ran all the way home)".

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 8:08 am

The Metropolitans, the Woodies, the Bel Airs, the Mustangs, the Barracudas, the Borgward Isabellas...

(Just kidding...)

Remember Robert Mitchum's "Ballad of Thunder Road"?

rictified · Post by **rictified** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 9:54 am

I have that Impalas 45 and mine isn't stereo, but I have also heard that before.
I just went on a long search and the first one was by Danny and the Juniors: Their next-to-last ABC disc (“Somehow I Can’t Forget”) in 1959 had the distinction of being the first stereo 45 RPM single. Upon further searching there are many claims to first stereo 45: One of the earliest is "Three Bells" by the Browns in 1959. Stereo itself came into mass production around 1958. Songs like "Don't Let Go" by Roy Hamilton, "Summertime, Summertime" by the Jamies and "Born Too Late" by the Poni Tails.

That bass beginning in Fun Fun Fun is a baritone guitar not a bass I'm pretty sure. It sounds great though. The bass rumbles underneath it.

wmthor · Post by **wmthor** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 12:21 pm

NOW LET ME TELL THE STORY, I CAN TELL IT ALL
ABOUT THE MOUNTAIN BOY WHO RAN ILLEGAL ALCOHOL
HIS DADDY MADE THE WHISKEY, SON, HE DROVE THE LOAD
WHEN HIS ENGINE ROARED, THEY CALLED THE HIGHWAY THUNDER ROAD.

SOMETIMES INTO ASHVILLE, SOMETIMES MEMPHIS TOWN
THE REVENOORS CHASED HIM BUT THEY COULDN'T RUN HIM DOWN
EACH TIME THEY THOUGHT THEY HAD HIM, HIS ENGINE WOULD EXPLODE
HE'D GO BY LIKE THEY WERE STANDIN' STILL ON THUNDER ROAD.

CHORUS:
THERE WAS THUNDER, THUNDER OVER THUNDER ROAD
THUNDER WAS HIS ENGINE, AND WHITE LIGHTNING WAS HIS LOAD

THERE WAS MOONSHINE, MOONSHINE TO QUENCH THE DEVIL'S THIRST
THE LAW THEY SWORE THEY'D GET HIM, BUT THE DEVIL GOT HIM FIRST.