The Gamblers (American band)

The Gamblers were an American surf rock band led by guitarist-songwriter Derry Weaver and active from 1959 to 1961. Their best known record was the 1960 instrumental "Moon Dawg", sometimes regarded as the first surf music single.

The group's lineup featured Derry Weaver on lead guitar, Elliot Ingber on rhythm guitar, Larry Taylor on bass, and Bruce Johnston on keyboards. They recorded "Moon Dawg" in the fall of 1959, which was produced by Nick Venet and released on World Pacific Jazz Records in 1960 with the B-side carrying another surf instrumental, "LSD-25". The piece's title made reference to a character from the 1959 beach film Gidget. "Moon Dawg!" was well-received in California and almost entered the Billboard Top 100. At the time, the B-side, "LSD-25", did not have the connotations that would later be associated with LSD and psychedelic music. Its use, which the group adopted after seeing the term mentioned in the title of a newspaper article, nonetheless demonstrated that the phrase was in the consciousness of the American public and anticipated the more explicit lyrics to come. It was covered by The Beach Boys on their album Surfin' Safari in 1962. A second 1961 single was A: "Teen Machine" B: "Tonky". The group broke up in 1962.

The Beach Boys

The Beach Boys are an American rock band formed in Hawthorne, California in 1961. The group's original lineup consisted of brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and their friend Al Jardine. They emerged at the vanguard of the "California Sound", performing original surf songs that gained international popularity for their distinct vocal harmonies and lyrics exploring a southern California youth culture of surfing, cars, and romance. Influenced by jazz-based vocal groups, 1950s rock and roll, and doo-wop, Brian led the band in devising novel approaches to music production, arranging his compositions for studio orchestras, and experimenting with several genres ranging from pop ballads to psychedelic and baroque.

The group began as a garage band managed by the Wilsons' father Murry, with Brian's creative ambitions and sophisticated songwriting abilities dominating the group's musical direction. After 1964, their albums took a different stylistic path that featured more personal lyrics, multi-layered sounds, and recording experiments. In 1966, the Pet Sounds album and "Good Vibrations" single vaunted the group to the top level of rock innovators and established the band as symbols of the nascent counterculture era. Following the dissolution of Smile, Brian gradually ceded control to the rest of the band, reducing his input because of mental health and substance abuse issues. Though the more democratic incarnation of the Beach Boys recorded a string of albums in various music styles that garnered international critical success, the group struggled to reclaim their commercial momentum in America. Since the 1980s, much-publicized legal wrangling over royalties, songwriting credits and use of the band's name transpired.

The Beach

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Arrow (disambiguation)

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Davie Allan

Davie Allan is a guitarist best known for his work on soundtracks to various teen and biker movies in the 1960s. Allan's backing band is almost always the Arrows (i.e., Davie Allan & the Arrows), although the Arrows have never had a stable lineup.

Biography

Allan grew up in the San Fernando Valley in Southern California, and learned to play guitar as a teenager. His career as a musician began when he teamed up with Mike Curb, a friend he met in the choir at Grant High School in Van Nuys, California, to form an instrumental surf combo. In 1963, Curb founded Curb Records, the first of many labels he would run, and released the first Davie Allan single, “War Path”. Allan participated in recording a number of other singles for Curb's label, under group names like the Sudells, the Heyburners, and the Zanies.

In 1964, Curb founded Sidewalk Records (which was distributed by Capitol subsidiary Tower Records), brought Allan with him as a session musician, and secured a recording contract for the newly formed Arrows. Curb had also made a deal to supply Roger Corman's American International Pictures with soundtracks. Allan had come to Corman's attention from his playing on the soundtrack of Skaterdater.