California sound

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Not to be confused with
West Coast sound
.
A young couple watching the sunset on a Los Angeles beach with surfboard in hand

The California sound is a

studio experimentation.[5]

The sound was originally identified for harnessing a wide-eyed, sunny optimism attributed to Southern California teenage life in the 1960s.[6] Its imagery is primarily represented by Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, who are credited for the sound's instigation via their debut single "Surfin'" in 1961.[7][8] Along with Jan and Dean, the Beach Boys encapsulated surfing, hot rod culture, and youthful innocence within music which transformed a local lifestyle into American mythology.[9] Other proponents included songwriters and/or record producers Gary Usher, Curt Boettcher, Bruce Johnston, Terry Melcher, and Roger Christian.

The California sound gradually evolved to reflect a more musically ambitious and mature worldview, becoming less to do with surfing and cars and more about social consciousness and political awareness.

the Eagles.[13] A derivative form of the California sound was later classified as sunshine pop.[16][17]

Origins

The Beach Boys in a promotional shot used for their 1964 single "I Get Around"
The Beach Boys – "Surfin' U.S.A."
Author Luis Sanchez writes: "If Surfin' U.S.A. [the album] didn't literally transform America into an endless beach, it added vivid dimension to California mythos and took it further than anyone would have thought."[18]
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Further information: Youth culture and Californian beach culture

The genesis of the California sound is said to be

Jan Berry for several hit singles written and produced for other artists, they recorded what would later be regarded as the California sound.[22][23] University of Southern California history professor Kevin Starr has stated that the band was historically important for embodying the era of the Silent Generation, which he described as unpolitical.[24] He explained that the group "could not help but mythologize a landscape and way of life that was already so surreal, so proto-mythic, in its setting. Cars and the beach, surfing, the California Girl, all this fused in the alembic of youth: Here was a way of life, an iconography, already half-released into the chords and multiple tracks of a new sound."[8] The California sound was thus a musical translation of the California myth.[25]
In the book Pioneers of Rock and Roll: 100 Artists Who Changed the Face of Rock, Harry Sumrall summarized:

[The Beach Boys] virtually defined the image of surfers, hot rods, sun, beaches, girls, and fun, fun, fun that became the California myth. The titles of their songs said it as well as anything: "

Surfin' U.S.A.," "Little Deuce Coupe," "Surfer Girl," "Fun, Fun, Fun," "Dance, Dance, Dance," and "California Girls". With these hits and others, the group's bassist and songwriter, Brian Wilson, created a new sound in rock and roll. It was called the "surf sound", but in fact it was a combination of older rock verities set in entirely new lyrical and musical contexts.[26]

The Beach Boys' surf music was not entirely of their own invention, being preceded by artists such as Dick Dale.[27] However, previous surf musicians did not project a worldview as the Beach Boys did.[28] Wilson once said of its myth: "It's not just the surfing; it's the outdoors and cars and sunshine; it's the society of California; it's the way of California."[29] Al Jardine of the Beach Boys argued that "It's not entirely a myth. There are still some elements that are certainly true, especially for a first-time observer. But to be able to come here and to drive that coast on Route 1 ... you experience the water and the animals and the sea life, the whole thing. It's really magical. It really is."[30] Capitol Records staff producer Nick Venet, who worked with the group early on, believed that most of the group's lyrical inspiration was drawn from Hollywood films.[31]

All Summer Long" calls it a "potent example" of the California myth's "idyllic dream world of sun, surf, and fun" while containing qualities of sunshine pop.[32] Author Luis Sanchez believes that the entirety of the album All Summer Long (1964) was "the nearest the Beach Boys ever got to a perfect version of the California myth."[33] David Howard wrote that "Don't Worry Baby" was a "subtle harbinger for the growing dichotomy within the California sound. While 'I Get Around' symbolized the sunshine ideal in all its carefree splendor, 'Don't Worry Baby' suggested something entirely more pensive and even slightly dark underneath its pristine facade."[23]

Cultural expansion

The Beach Boys continued expanding their version of the California myth until it could no longer be confined to pop music terrain, transcending the limits of genre, commercial expectations, and geography.[3] Aiding this was Wilson's successes with collaborator Gary Usher. The duo helped create a major new market revolving around the California sound, allowing musicians Bruce Johnston (who would later join The Beach Boys) and Terry Melcher to turn their attention to the Rip Chords, a group who then had hits with the hot-rod themed "Hey Little Cobra" and pseudo-surf "Summer Means Fun".[34] Historian Matthew Allan Ides wrote:

The writing duo of [Gary] Usher and

Little Old Lady from Pasadena" and "Don’t Worry Baby".[35]

Historian Kirse Granat May describes the cultural reverberation of both surfing culture and the California sound:

By 1965, with the help of the California sound, the national diffusion of the surfing subculture was complete. It became a mainstream advertising image, keyed into California's youthfulness as "an element of the marketing picture." Pepsi used images of surfers and this pun, "Board Members of the Pepsi Generation". ... Surfing appeared on television sitcoms like Gidget and even entered the plots of shows like Dr. Kildare. ... In the wake of the surfing craze and the emergence of the California sound, American International Pictures (AIP) produced beach and surfing movies for appreciative teenage audiences, reinforcing marketable images. ... the Beach Party films exploited on the big screen what the Beach Boys set to music.[36]

Touching specifically on the difference between the Beach Boys' album Surfin' U.S.A. (1963) and others' exploitation of California themes, Luis Sanchez writes: "You could call The Beach Boys' version of Southern California cutesy or callow or whatever, but what matters is that it captured a lack of self-consciousness—a genuineness—that set them apart from their peers. And it was this quality that came to define Brian's oeuvre as he moved beyond and into bigger pop productions that would culminate in Smile."[18]

Development and decline

The Mamas & the Papas – "California Dreamin'"
The Mamas & the Papas' 1965 single "California Dreamin'" supplemented the California myth.[29]
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Terry Melcher (left) with the Byrds' Gene Clark and David Crosby

The California sound soon developed to incorporate the 1960s

Arnold Shaw
summarized in The Rock Revolution (1969):

The California sound went from one extreme to another—from "

fuzztone and feedback, from celebration of the open road to a search for strange inner experiences, from the thrill of speed to liberation through sensory overload, from the excitement of bodily motion to the explosiveness of mind-expanding drugs, and from the Beach Boys to the Mothers of Invention—a process in which the Boys themselves underwent an audible, if not visible, transformation.[40]

The result of

Irish Mirror, singer-songwriter David Crosby, a founding member of both the Byrds and later Crosby, Stills, & Nash, helped shape the California sound which became popular in the 1970s.[46]

In Howard's description, "One can view the evolution of the California Sunshine Sound as a mirror of

Manson murders, with Howard calling it the "sunset of the original California Sunshine Sound ... [the] sweetness advocated by the California myth had led to chilling darkness and unsightly rot".[47]

1970s and revivals

See also: Yacht rock and Chillwave

According to Flanagan, by the 1970s, the "spirit" of the California sound was kept fresh by singer–songwriters such as

country-rock debut album Eagles (1972) helped define the Southern California sound of the early 1970s.[50]

In November 2009, Pitchfork ran an editorial feature which mentioned the Beach Boys as a "looming figure" throughout that summer's indie music scene termed the "Summer of Chillwave" elaborating that it is "not to say that any of this music sounds like the Beach Boys, or even tries to. ... The Beach Boys exist in this music in an abstracted form-- an idea, rather than a sound, as it's often been ... Summertime now is about disorientation: 'Should Have Taken Acid With You'; 'The Sun Was High (And So Am I)'; You take the fantasy of [their] music-- the cars, the sand, the surf-- add a dollop of melancholy and a smudge of druggy haze, and you have some good music for being alone in a room with only a computer to keep you company."[51] The magazine Paste credited a 2010s revival of surf rock and the California sound to the success of bands like Best Coast, Dum Dum Girls and Wavves.[52]

Genres

Surf music

Main article: Surf music

The California sound is sometimes referred to interchangeably with surf music.[19]

Folk rock

Main article: Folk rock

California folk rockers included the Byrds, Barry McGuire, and the Mamas & the Papas.[37]

Sunshine pop

Main article: Sunshine pop

Efforts by Curt Boettcher in 1966 created an offshoot of the California sound directed toward sunshine pop.[53]

Other California sounds

Main articles: Bakersfield sound and San Francisco sound

Some areas within the state of California are connected to their own distinguished "sounds" including the San Francisco sound (San Francisco, 1960s)[54] and the Bakersfield sound (Bakersfield, 1950s).[55] Ides noted: "The Los Angeles sound as popularized in the mainstream obscured or disregarded the contributions made by the working-class, the nonwhite and women."[56]

In a

the Grateful Dead, the Offspring, Tupac Shakur, and X.[2]

Notes

  1. ^ A genre according to Michael Roffman[1] and a lifestyle according to Jillian Mapes.[2]

References

  1. Consequence of Sound
    .
  2. ^ a b c Mapes, Jillian (May 7, 2015). "30 of the Most Californian Albums Ever Made". Flavorwire.
  3. ^ a b Sanchez 2014, pp. 13–14.
  4. ^ Howard 2004, p. 61.
  5. ^ Howard 2004, p. 49–50.
  6. ^ a b Howard 2004, p. 49.
  7. ^ Howard 2004, p. 51.
  8. ^ a b Starr 2009.
  9. S2CID 239604025
    .
  10. ^ Howard 2004, pp. 61–62, 83.
  11. ^ Shuker 1994, p. 35.
  12. ISBN 978-0-89370-909-9
    .
  13. ^ a b Morris, Chris (June 15, 1996). "Rhino Chronicles 'California Sound'". Billboard. Retrieved 27 January 2023.
  14. ^ a b Vasudevan, Varsha. "'Echo in the Canyon' chronicles the birth of the iconic California Sound in the Mecca of folk-rock music". Media Entertainment Arts WorldWide. Retrieved 27 January 2023.
  15. ^ Goggans & Difranco 2004, p. 358–59.
  16. ^ Wheadon, Bret. "The California Sound". The Beach Boys: The Complete Guide.
  17. ^ Howard 2004, p. 69.
  18. ^ a b Sanchez 2014, p. 32.
  19. ^ a b Browne & Browne 1986, p. 194.
  20. ^ Massey 2000, p. 47.
  21. ^ a b c Flanagan 2010.
  22. ^ Priore 2005, p. 24.
  23. ^ a b Howard 2004, p. 57.
  24. ^ "Giving the Beach Boys a permanent address". The Sun. Baltimore. March 28, 2004.
  25. ^ Howard 2004, p. 50.
  26. ^ Sumrall 1994, p. 15.
  27. ^ Sanchez 2014, p. 13.
  28. ^ Miller 1992, p. 193.
  29. ^ a b Bisbort & Puterbaugh 2009, p. 172.
  30. ^ "Al Jardine And The Myth Of California". American Songwriter. February 6, 2013.
  31. ^ May 2002, p. 114.
  32. Allmusic
    .
  33. ^ Sanchez 2014, p. 30.
  34. ^ Howard 2004, pp. 59–60.
  35. ^ Ides 2009, pp. 264–265.
  36. ^ May 2002, pp. 114–115.
  37. ^ a b Gilliland 1969, show 33.
  38. ^ a b c Howard 2004, pp. 61–62.
  39. ^ Bradley, William (14 December 2016). "The Eagles' Hotel California at 40, Buffalo Springfield at 50". Huffington Post. Retrieved 27 January 2023.
  40. ^ Shaw 1969, p. 147.
  41. ^ a b Howard 2004, p. 83.
  42. ^ The Beach Boys (September 1965). "The Things We LOVE and the Things We HATE". 16 Magazine. Vol. 7, no. 4.
  43. ^ a b Priore 2005, pp. 28, 39.
  44. ^ Reid, Darren R. (2013). "Deconstructing America: The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson, and the Making of SMiLE". Open Access History and American Studies.
  45. ^ Howard 2004, p. 70.
  46. ^ Goodall, Sophie (20 January 2023). "Graham Nash and Stephen Stills pen tributes to former band's 'glue' David Crosby". Irish Mirror. Retrieved 27 January 2023.
  47. ^ Howard 2004, p. 84.
  48. ^ Italie, Hillel. "Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey, who sang 'Take It Easy,' dies". The Providence Journal. Retrieved 27 January 2023.
  49. ^ Woliver, Robbie (4 June 2000). "MUSIC; Former Eagles Drummer Is Back, Making His Own Way". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 January 2023.
  50. ^ Hasted, Nick (20 December 2021). "The Eagles: "I came to look at bands as young businesses"". Uncut Magazine. Retrieved 27 January 2023.
  51. ^ Richardson, Mark, ed. (November 12, 2009). "In My Room (The Best Coast Song): Nine Fragments on Lo-fi's Attraction to the Natural World". Pitchfork.
  52. ^ Sedghi, Sarra (July 20, 2015). "Musical Road Trip: Route 101". Paste.
  53. ^ Howard 2004, pp. 50, 69.
  54. ^ Gilliland 1969, shows 41–42.
  55. ^ Bakersfield Sound | Country Music | Ken Burns
  56. ^ Ides 2009, p. 253.

Sources

Further reading
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