Chords for Dick Dale - The King Of Surf Guitar

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[E] _ _ _ _ Well, I wasn't a guitar player really.
I can't even read music, but I can play every instrument there is and piano being my favorite _
Harry James stuff, Louis Armstrong [G] stuff.
I loved the way Harry James played and so I [E] always imitated him
I did the harmonicas and [B] anything that came [F] to me, sax
I learned to [E] play the big band stuff and [A] that's what that became my life.
Hank Williams, of course on the guitar
[Abm] Because [G] Gene Cooper was my big hero
[F] He [Abm] was the first man to make [E] drums and solo instruments
I developed the style of his drumming because I love drums too.
So and that's how
You do that.
You can hear the pulse on the one
_ _ _ [Em] So I'm playing drums [A] on the guitar [B] when I got my first guitar
[N] I was out there in the woods and picking blueberries and my [E] buddy and I heard this
Guitar strumming it [Bbm] was like yeah, we were [F] like in like [E] deliverance or something like that
and so we went into this old building [Bb] and there's four or five guys [F] were just in this old house and [Bb] these guys were [E] like
Cigarettes rolled up in here and stuff like that and I goes and he goes my guitars for sale
They were doing the old strumming like cowboy stuff, you know
I was how much he was eight bucks
That was all the money in the world to me because I was only making five cents an hour at a bakery making bread at
The time I'm you know made payments 50 cents a week, you know until I paid it
[F] So then what happened was I came to California in 1954 when I [E] graduated in 11th grade in Quincy, Massachusetts
Then [F] I went down to [E] Bilboa rode my motorcycle down there my Harley and I had a 1941 flathead Harley
I met this kid kid who played folk guitar and
Nickel Mellon and he goes dick be nice to start up a band, you know
And because but you got to play all strings.
You got to put your fingers in all the strings
He was I don't know how to do you're playing upside down backwards
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[Abm] Okay, Leo Fender was like a dad [Gb] a second dad to me [B] and when I [E] first met Leo I
Said hi.
My name is dick Dale
I'm a surfer.
I got no money.
Can you help me out?
And I'm playing in [Fm] Bilboa
[Em] He said hey, I just made this guitar, you know, and I came out to California in 54
That's when he made the Stratocaster
He handed me the Strat and I [E] picked it up
And I started playing it and he just rolled off the chair and started [G] laughing because and he never laughed
He was like Einstein.
He was [A] always focusing
[Em] He he goes how come you're holding the guitar like that?
It's upside down backwards
[B] Then [Eb] _ [Gb] _ [A] _ _ [Db] _ [E] _
_ when Leo gave me the Strat and he says alright beat it to death
And I want you to tell me what you think [G] of it
he liked me I guess because I like the same [Em] things that he did but I started blowing up all his amplifiers and
Because I put I had [A] 60 gauge strings on I [E] used
16 18 20 [B] 39 49 and [Em] 60 gauge strings that that [A] fender made at [E] the time and fitted the virus was from Hawaii
And he [Bb] played the Hawaiian [A] steel.
[E] Well, Leo [A] brought him over from [Em] Hawaii to perfect the Telecaster and
Freddie would explain to me the theory he says if you could put pickups [Ebm] on a on a telephone pole
You know the fattest [E] sound in the world, but you can't hold the telephone pole
That's why the Strat was made so [B] thick
I get the original [Em] Strat that Leo gave me and I and and [G] I pioneered a lot of the things [E] he did the fender Rhodes [Em] piano [B] I
[E] Did that played that first of [B] the Hollywood [Em] Bowl when we made the Jaguars and the Jazzmasters [Em] for different reasons
Fender contemple or did I would use that because they had the [D] fattest thickest [E] sound with an edge on [G] it
He used [E] to tell [A] Freddie
When it can [B] withstand the punishment that [Em] Dick Dale
Gives it it is then fit for the human consumption
[A] That was Leo's favorite saying and he [Abm] would chuckle, [D] you know, because he never would [B] would laugh
[E] We split the atom when he finally after blowing up 50 of his amplifiers and catching those speakers [G] on fire
I used to fry those things [E] Freddie [Bb] finally [E] brought him down to the rendezvous ballroom where [G] I was performing to 4,000 people a night
Leo stood in the middle [A] of 4,000 people and he said to Freddie [B] now.
I know what big [E] deals trying to tell him
So what [A] happened was?
He [F] created the first 85 wide output transformer jumping from [E] 10 [A] watts
[Em] He went up to [A] 85 watts [Gm] peaking [A] a hundred watts with 58 81 [Em] tubes
then we had to have a speaker that [A] would handle it so he went to JBL [E] and
[F] And we we told him we wanted a 15-inch speaker with around 10 11 pound magnet [E] in the back and I wanted the aluminum dust
Cover in the middle so I could hear the click of my pick
[N] So it became the JBL 15 is d130 and then Leo
Once I put it in there
He called it the showman and of course the color of the amplifier was by accident because I had blown up so many I needed
One that night he didn't have anything to [Gb] cover it with and he grabbed some [E] cream tolex [Am] and covered it so I could have something
Don't let anybody see it.
[Gm] It's very impractical
You know, they're gonna burn it with cigarettes and coffee and [E] I go but I love it
I love it.
And so the next week he says come [F] here and the whole the [Em] line was all done cream tolex
So he called it the showman because I used to leap off my amplifiers and stuff like that.
You're a showman
So that's how [A] that happened.
Then I said, you know, [Ab] I wanted to put two in two [Bb] [C] Lansing's
No, I gotta [A] change the impedance
[G] So he made the first hundred watt output [B] transformer peaking [C] 180 watts
that's [A] that's like going from a VW bug [E] to a test or Rosa it was [C] unheard of [E] and
[Am] And that's when dick Dale
[N] Was called the father of heavy metal and the you know, and he started making people's ears bleed
Now for 20 years I've been screaming about people
Reaching over a good 8 inch guitar box or a 6 inch box and strumming and you get
Charlie horses here and the older you get the quicker they come and
So I said why can't I drop my arm [C] down and they says you'll never get a sound
And I said well here watch this and I say make it all mahogany
Because when you have it in two words
Everything has a molecular structure when you strike the string it wants to travel like a tsunami wave
Come up the side go through the top
But when he gets to the top it has a different wood and it is a different
[Gb] Molecule [Bb] size and that's the problem [E] so you can hear the string, but you're never gonna hear the pure [A] color
[C] So they listened to me.
They made it out [Dm] of mahogany mahogany mahogany
I painted mine, you know [A] candy apple red because I like hot rods Jimmy my [G] son
His is called [E] the Kingman Jimmy Dale signature Kingman, and it's all [A] hand rubbed mahogany
And it's the [B] size of a [Em] dreadnought is the large size, but [C] with only three inch body on it [Dm] to pick guards
[Am] So that when you strum over [B] zealously [E] you don't scratch up here either
And I'm getting so many compliments from people [A] saying that they really like that the way it looks with the [Em] design to
Then we put [Dm] the Stratocaster fender Stratocaster neck into [A] there
So with all of these things and this is only a three-quarter [E] size
_ Isn't that unbelievable
So now I will never play any of my other acoustic guitars because I can play this one all day long see
And _ that nice
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