 | Often erroneously credited to the Surf Family, the artist is by The Hollywood Surfers, a fictitious name conjured for the project. The band was actually The Rhythm Crusaders. the following details are paraphrased from information provided by guitarist Jerry Madderra. "Jerry Madderra was in a band based in Huntington Beach around 1962 called The Rhythm Crusaders. They had worked with a promoter and producer named John Gardell, Gardell knew LA DJ Huggy Boy who that owned Dub Tone Records. they had rights to a couple of presurf Dick Dale tracks and wanted to put out an album to capitalize on Dicks name. Gardell suggested The Rhythm Crusaders fill out the album. The session was at Gold Star. Not all of the regular band members could make the session, so we Jessie Cassaras was brought in on drums. Jessie was a good drummer they had worked with before. They added 2 sax players, Tony Elisalda and Rudy Naverette. The players at the session were: Larry Carney - lead guitar Jerry Madderra - bass and 2nd guitar Kenny St. John - 2nd guitar and bass Tony Elisalda - tenor sax Rudy Naverette - tenor sax Jessie Cassaras - drums All of the songs except for "All Night Long" and "Last Night" were written in the studio while they rolled tape and most songs were cut from one or two takes at most. The Stratocaster Larry played on the album Jerry, and it is the oldest Strat known in the world - the second prototype Leo Fender made in late '53. The guitar was given to Jerry's father for field testing back in early '54. The Rhythm Crusaders recorded this album in the evening and only had 2 hours in the studio. The Surf Family was produced as a bargain bin filler. At the time there was a hit comedy album by The Hollywood Surfers called The First Family, so Dick Hug coined The Surf Family. The Rhythm Crusaders were not a surf band, and really looked down our nose at most of them. They only did this as kind of a goof, poking fun at the surf music, although Dick and John didn't know this. Jerry isn't sure how much they were paid for the session, but thinks each musician got $20. Jerry had to buy his own copy of the album because there wasn't any money in the budget for comps/ It sat in his closet for 45 years before learning that there was any interest in this old music. He was surprised by that. The album was only in limited release, so there can only be a few copies still out there. Most of the music here is raw and immediate. Given the quick turn creation, the tunes are not as jammy as the stuff that came from the usual Hollywood suspects, and certainly sports some real energy and creativity. Somewhere the masters languish in a vault. The LP also includes Dick Dale's two often-leased presurf vocal pop sides, "We'll Never Hear The End" and "The Fairest Of Them All." |