| Jan and Dean | |
|---|---|
performing at the 1985 Orange County Fair |
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| Background information | |
| Origin | Southern California |
| Genres | R&B, surf rock, folk rock, sunshine pop, psychedelic rock |
| Years active | 1958–2004 |
| Labels | Arwin Dore Ripple Challenge Liberty J&D Record Co. Jan & Dean Columbia Warner Bros. Brer Bird White Whale |
| Associated acts | Jan & Arnie The Beach Boys The Matadors Fantastic Baggys |
| Website | http://www.jananddean.com |
Jan and Dean were a rock and roll duo, popular from the late 1950s through the mid 1960s, consisting of William Jan Berry (April 3, 1941 – March 26, 2004) and Dean Ormsby Torrence (born March 10, 1940). They became associated with the vocal "surf music" craze that was popularized by The Beach Boys.
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Jan Berry and Dean Torrence, both born in Los Angeles, California, began singing together as a duo after football practice at University High School. Primitive recording sessions followed soon after, in a makeshift studio in Berry's garage. They first performed onstage as "The Barons" at a high school dance. With the Barons, Jan Berry was experimenting with multi-part vocal arrangements — five years before he started working professionally with Brian Wilson.[1]
Their first commercial success was "Jennie Lee" (1958), an ode to a local, Hollywood burlesque performer, that Jan Berry recorded with fellow Baron Arnie Ginsburg and which reached #8 on the charts. "Jan & Arnie" released three singles in all. After Dean Torrence returned from a stint in the army reserves, Berry and Torrence began to make music as "Jan and Dean." "Jennie Lee" and "Gas Money", both from 1958, contained a few elements of what would later become surf music.
With the help of record producers Herb Alpert and Lou Adler, Jan and Dean scored a #10 hit with "Baby Talk" (1959), their first song to contain a few of the soon to be famous elements that became associated with surf (close vocal harmonies, selective use of major and minor chords, falsetto doo-wop singing) and then scored a series of hits over the next couple of years. Playing local venues, they met and performed with the Beach Boys, and discovered the appeal of the latter's "surf sound". By this time, Berry was co-writing, arranging, and producing all of Jan and Dean's original material. Berry signed a series of contracts with Screen Gems to write and produce music for Jan and Dean, as well as other artists such as Judy & Jill (which included Berry's girlfriend Jill Gibson and Dean Torrence's girlfriend Judy Lovejoy), The Matadors, and Pixie (a young female solo singer).[2]
During this time, Berry co-wrote and/or arranged and produced songs for artists outside of Jan and Dean, including The Angels ("I Adore Him", Top 30), the Gents, the Matadors (Sinners), Judy & Jill, Pixie (unreleased), Jill Gibson, Shelley Fabares, Deane Hawley, The Rip Chords ("Three Window Coupe", Top 30), and Johnny Crawford, among others.
Unlike most other rock 'n roll acts of the period, Jan and Dean did not give music their full-time attention. Jan and Dean were college students, maintaining their studies while writing and recording music and making public appearances on the side.
Torrence majored in advertising design in the school of architecture at USC, where he also was a member of the Phi Sigma Kappa Fraternity. Berry took science and music classes at UCLA, and entered the California College of Medicine (now the UC Irvine School of Medicine) in 1963. By the time of his 1966 auto accident, Berry had completed two years of medical school.[3]
Jan and Dean reached their commercial peak in 1963 and 1964, after they met Brian Wilson. The duo scored an impressive sixteen Top 40 hits on the Billboard and Cash Box magazine charts, with a total of twenty-six chart hits over an eight-year period (1958–1966). Jan and Brian Wilson collaborated on roughly a dozen hits and album cuts for Jan and Dean, including the number one national hit "Surf City", written by Brian Wilson,[4] in 1963. Subsequent top 10 hits included "Drag City" (#10, 1964), the eerily portentous "Dead Man's Curve" (#8, 1964), and "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena" (#3, 1964).
In 1964, at the height of their fame, Jan and Dean hosted and performed at The T.A.M.I. Show, a historic concert film directed by Steve Binder. The film also featured such acts as The Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, Gerry & the Pacemakers, James Brown, Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, Lesley Gore, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, and The Beach Boys (whose sequence was later cut from the film, due to contract issues). [Note that Dick Clark recently purchased the rights to the TAMI film and re-inserted the Beach Boys' numbers - This TAMI resurrection was used as a PBS fundraiser and the DVD is available from the PBS website.] Also in 1964, the duo performed the title track for the Columbia Pictures film Ride the Wild Surf, starring Fabian, Tab Hunter, Peter Brown, Shelley Fabares, and Barbara Eden. The song, penned by Jan Berry, Brian Wilson, and Roger Christian, was a Top 20 national hit. The pair were also to have appeared in the film but their roles were cut following their friendship with Barry Keenan who had engineered the Frank Sinatra Jr kidnapping.[5]
Jan and Dean also filmed two unreleased television pilots: Surf Scene in 1963 and On the Run in 1966. Their feature film for Paramount Pictures, Easy Come, Easy Go, was canceled when Berry, as well as the film's director and other crew members, were seriously injured in a railroad accident while shooting the movie in Chatsworth, California in August 1965.
After the surf craze, Jan and Dean scored two Top-30 hits in 1965: "You Really Know How to Hurt a Guy" and "I Found a Girl"—the latter from the album Folk 'n Roll. During this period, they also began to experiment with cutting-edge comedy concepts such as the original (unreleased) Filet of Soul and Jan & Dean Meet Batman. The former's album cover shows Berry with his leg in a cast as a result of the accident while filming Easy Come, Easy Go.
On April 12, 1966, Berry received severe head injuries in an automobile accident just a short distance from Dead Man's Curve in Los Angeles, California, two years after the song had become a hit. He was on his way to a business meeting when he crashed his Corvette into a parked truck on Whittier Drive, near the intersection of Sunset Boulevard, in Beverly Hills. He had also separated from his girlfriend of seven years, singer-artist Jill Gibson, later a member for a short time of The Mamas & the Papas, who had also co-written several songs with him.
Berry traveled a long and difficult road toward recovery from brain damage and partial paralysis. He had minimal use of his right arm, and had to learn to write with his left hand. Doctors said he would never walk again, but he refused to give up, and ultimately succeeded. Torrence stood by his partner, maintaining their presence in the music industry, and keeping open the possibility that they would perform together again.[6]
In Berry's absence, Torrence released several singles on the J&D Record Co. label and recorded Save for a Rainy Day in 1966, a concept album featuring all rain-themed songs. Torrence posed with Berry's brother Ken for the album cover photos. Columbia Records released one single from the project ("Yellow Balloon") as did the song's writer, Gary Zekley, with The Yellow Balloon, but with legal wrangles scuttling Torrence's Columbia deal and Berry's disapproval of the project, Save for a Rainy Day remained a self-released album on the J&D Record Co. label.[7]
Besides his studio work, Torrence became a graphic artist starting his own company, Kittyhawk Graphics, and designing and creating album covers and logos for other musicians and recording artists, including Harry Nilsson, Steve Martin, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Dennis Wilson, Bruce Johnston, The Beach Boys, Diana Ross and The Supremes, Linda Ronstadt, Canned Heat, The Ventures and many others. Torrence (with Gene Brownell) won a Grammy Award for "Album Cover of the Year", for the group Pollution in 1973.
Berry returned to the studio in April 1967, one year almost to the day after his accident. Working with collaborators, he began writing and producing music again. In December 1967, Jan and Dean signed an agreement with Warner Bros. Records. Warner issued three singles under the name "Jan and Dean", but a 1968 Berry-produced album for Warner Bros., the psychedelic Carnival of Sound, remained unreleased until February 2010, when Rhino Records' "Handmade" label put out CD and vinyl compilations of all tracks recorded for Carnival, along with various outtakes and remixes from the project.[8]
Berry began to sing again in the early 1970s, and he arranged and produced a number of singles (both solo and as Jan & Dean) between 1972 and 1978 on the Ode and A&M labels, facilitated by friend and former manager Lou Adler.[9] Berry also toured with his Aloha band, while Dean began performing with a band called Papa Doo Run Run.
In 1973, Jan and Dean made an appearance at the Hollywood Palladium, as part of Jim Pewter's "Surfer's Stomp" reunion, in which the duo attempted to lip sync "Surf City," and the record failed. They were booed off stage. The duo's first live performance after Berry's accident occurred at the Palomino Nightclub in North Hollywood on June 5, 1976 (ten years after the accident) as guests of Disneyland regulars Papa Doo Run Run. Their first actual multi-song concert billed as Jan and Dean took place in 1978 in New York City at The Palladium as part of The Murray The K Brooklyn Fox Reunion Show. This was followed by a handful of East Coast shows as guests of their longtime friends The Beach Boys. Four nationwide J & D headlined tours followed through 1980. Jan was still suffering the effects of his 1966 accident, with partial paralysis and aphasia. He had a noticeable limp and his right arm was useless. In addition, his speech was slowed down a bit to keep up with his still almost genius IQ.[10][11]
On February 3, 1978, CBS aired a made-for-TV movie about the duo titled Deadman's Curve. The biopic starred Richard Hatch as Jan Berry and Bruce Davison as Dean Torrence, with cameo appearances by Dick Clark, Wolfman Jack, Mike Love of the Beach Boys, and Bruce Johnston (who at that time was temporarily out of the Beach Boys), as well as Berry himself (near the end of the movie, he can be seen sitting in the audience, watching "himself" (Richard Hatch) perform onstage). The part of Jan & Dean's band, Papa Doo Run Run, was played by themselves. Johnston and Berry had known each other since high school, and had played music together in Berry's garage in Bel Air—long before Jan & Dean or the Beach Boys were formed. Following the release of the film, the duo made steps toward an official comeback that year, including touring with the Beach Boys.
In the early 1980s, Papa Doo Run Run left to explore other performance and recording ventures. Berry struggled to overcome drug addiction. Interestingly, in 1979, Jan also performed over 100 concerts of Jan and Dean songs with another front man from Hawaii, Randy Ruff, so Torrence toured briefly as "Mike & Dean," with Mike Love of the Beach Boys. Later, the duo reunited for good. In "Phase II" of their career, Dean Torrence led the touring operation. In 1986, Berry helped establish the Jan Berry Center for the Brain Injured in Downey, California. Though Berry only made a partial recovery, he remained a high-profile example for patients with traumatic brain injury.[12]
Jan and Dean continued to tour on their own throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and into the new millennium—with 1960s nostalgia providing them with a ready audience, headlining oldies shows throughout North America, usually during the summer months. Noted Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene penned a 2008 book, When We Get to Surf City: A Journey Through America in Pursuit of Rock and Roll, Friendship, and Dreams, detailing his occasional appearances with Jan & Dean's touring band throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Sundazed Records reissued Torrence's Save for a Rainy Day in 1996 in CD and vinyl formats, as well as the collector's vinyl 45" companion EP, "Sounds For A Rainy Day," featuring four instrumentals versions of the album's tracks.
Between the 1970s and 1990s, Torrence issued a number of re-recordings of classic Jan and Dean hits. An album titled One Summer Night / Live was issued by Rhino Records in 1982. He participated with Berry on Port to Paradise, released as a cassette on the J&D Records label in 1986. In 1997, after many years of hard work, Berry released a solo album called Second Wave on One Way Records. On August 31, 1991, Berry married Gertie Filip at The Stardust Convention Centre in Las Vegas, Nevada. Torrence was Berry's best man at the wedding.
Jan and Dean ended with Jan Berry's death on March 26, 2004, after suffering a seizure at the age of 62. Berry was an organ donor, and his body was cremated.[13] On April 18, 2004, a "Celebration of Life" was held in Berry's memory at The Roxy Theatre on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, California. Celebrities attending the event included Dean Torrence, Lou Adler, Jill Gibson, and Nancy Sinatra. Also present were many family members, friends, and musicians associated with Jan and Dean and the Beach Boys including the original 1970s version of Papa Doo Run Run.
Torrence now tours occasionally with The Surf City Allstars. He serves as a spokesman for the City of Huntington Beach California, which, thanks in part to his efforts, is nationally recognized as "Surf City USA." His website, Jan & Dean, features—among other things—rare images, a complete Jan & Dean discography, biography, and a timeline of his career with cohort Jan Berry. He currently resides in Huntington Beach, California with his wife and two daughters.
In 1964 Jan and Dean were signed to host what became the first multi-act Rock and Roll show that was edited into a motion picture designed for wide distribution. The T.A.M.I. Show became a seminal and original production - in essence one of the first rock videos - on its release in 1964. Using high quality film (good enough to be transferred from television kinescope directly onto 35mm motion picture stock), new sound recording techniques and having a remarkable cast, the T.A.M.I. Show set the standard for all succeeding music film and video work, including many of the early videos shown by Music Television 17 years later. The revolutionary technical achievements of The T.A.M.I. Show and the legendary list of performers (including a performance by James Brown that many critics have called the best of his career) marked a high point for Jan and Dean, as they were the hosts and one of the main featured acts as well. They became one of the main faces of mid-1960s music until Berry's auto accident two years later through their T.A.M.I. Show appearance.
According to rock critic Dave Marsh, the attitude and public persona of punk rock can be traced to Jan and Dean.[14] Certainly their early hits, recorded with myriad overdubs in a garage, and their casual and goofy stage antics were consistent with some of punk rock's ethos. But their constant improvement and the increased complexity of their arrangements in the latter recordings showed their fealty to Brian Wilson's baroque approach. Many of their records feature the top session players of the era, and their arrangements, with multiple key changes and complex vocal harmonies, reflected a high level of craftsmanship.
Nevertheless, both Jan Berry and Dean Torrence's anti-establishment attitude toward the music industry is well documented. Their music has been covered by numerous Punk and alternative bands since the 1970s.
Along with Phil Spector, Brian Wilson, and Lee Hazlewood, Berry enjoyed a reputation as one of the best record producers on the West Coast.[15] Brian Wilson has cited Berry as having a direct impact on his own growth as a record producer.[16]
In an interview conducted by Jan & Dean fan and historian David Beard for the Collectors' Choice release, Jan & Dean The Complete Liberty Singles [1], Dean Torrence stated that he felt the duo should be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: "We have the scoreboard if you just want to compare number of hits and musical projects done. We beat 75 percent of the people in there. So what else is it? I've got to think that we were pretty irreverent when it came to the music industry. They kind of always held that against us. That's OK with me."
The Who covered Jan and Dean's song "Bucket T" on their UK EP Ready Steady Who from 1966. It is one of only a few songs the group performed where Keith Moon (a huge surf music fan) provided the lead vocals.
That not everybody considered Jan and Dean's output to be "real" rock 'n roll is illustrated by disc jockey Steve Propes' calling his early-80s Sunday morning program on KLON Long Beach We Don't Play No Jan And Dean. He subsequently renamed the show Rock-N-Roll-N-Rhythm-N-Blues, which reflected its content equally well.[17]
In February 2010, the legendary unreleased Jan & Dean album "Carnival Of Sound" was released on the Rhino Handmade label. Along with the CD, there is also a limited (to 1500 copies) edition which includes the CD album plus a 10 track LP. The album was released in Europe in April 2010 in its original US form.
1958 (Jan & Arnie)
1959 (Jan & Dean)
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1960
1962
1963
1964
1965 (Note: Mono and Stereo Cashbox album charts were merged by this time)
1966
1967
1968
1971
1974
1975
1982
1985
1986
1996
1997
2010
(JL) = Produced by Joe Lubin
(AA) = Produced by Lou Adler & Herb Alpert
(LA) = Produced by Lou Adler
(SG) = Produced by Snuff Garrett
(AJB) = Arranged by Jan Berry
(JB) = Arranged & Produced by Jan Berry
(JB-GT) = Arranged & Produced by Jan Berry and George Tipton
(GZ-DT) = Arranged & Produced by Gary Zekley & Dean Torrence
(DT) = Produced by Dean Torrence
(LG) = A Laughing Gravy Production