The Jan and Dean saga deserves remembrance, not just because their binary star rates a bona fide place of significance in the pop firmament, but because theirs is a good yarn, with the same kind of compelling shape you would give to a short story, film, or, more to the point, hit song. They preceded The Beach Boys, whose sound seems so identical to theirs, and they also seem a kind of template for their early “Tom and Jerry” phase of Simon and Garfunkel’s career (a duo of white students putting their own spin on doo wop). They had a long and impressive string of hits, and were present in films and television. They were as big as about anybody out there, and for a period of years. But they were also of that period between rock’s big tent poles (the coming of Elvis and the advent of The Beatles), an era that is often glossed over. And, obviously, their memory tends to get inundated by the tidal wave of The Beach Boys, who had still more hits, longer lasting ones, and a career they managed to keep going for decades. If you play a Jan and Dean record for most people (even people who were teenagers in the early to mid ’60s) and ask them who the artist is, the odds are good they’ll say it’s The Beach Boys. Those who do remember them likely equate them to Peter and Gordon in relation to The Beatles. Or Belgium in relation to France, if you will. But today we will speak of their run, not their “also ran”.
The pair were Jan Berry (1941-2004) and Dean Torrence (b. 1940). In an industry that also has a Chuck Berry and Berry Gordy, not to mention a Ken Berry, Jan’s already swimming upstream in terms of name recognition. But Dean’s last name! I love the way that it subtly suggests the turgid and turbulent waters of the Pacific. (Yeah, yeah, just go with it). Berry’s father was an aeronautical engineer who worked on Howard Hughes’ famous Spruce Goose. The pair went to University High in L.A. — and what a talented student body it had at the time. Their fellow students included James Brolin, future sometime Beach Boy Bruce Johnston, Sandy Nelson (later a legendary session drummer who had a couple of hit records of his own), and Arnie Ginsburg, who became Berry’s first professional singing partner. Jan and Dean performed with the latter three and others in a short-lived band called The Barons.
Berry’s first fame came in the duo Jan and Arnie, with Ginsburg, who had penned their first hit song, “Jennie Lee” inspired by a local L.A. burlesque dancer. This was in 1958. More singles followed, and the boys made national television, on The Dick Clark Show and The Jack Benny Show. By the following year, Ginsburg had tired of show business, and Torrence, who had just finished compulsory military service, stepped in to replace him in the act with Berry, becoming Jan and Dean. Their first hit, the fun and frenetic “Baby Talk” was written and produced with the collaboration of young Herb Alpert and Lou Adler. It went all the way to #10 in 1959.
Then came the surfing craze and Jan and Dean’s long string of hits: “Surf City” (#1, 1963), “Honolulu Lulu” (#11, 1963), “Drag City” (#10, 1963), “Dead Man’s Curve” (#8, 1964), “The Little Old Lady From Pasadena” (#3, 1964), and “Ride the Wild Surf” (#16, 1964), the title song to the eponymous film. They had also played roles in the movie, but those scenes were cut when it was learned that the boys were acquaintances of Barry Keenan, who was on trial for kidnapping Frank Sinatra, Jr. During the same period Jan and Dean starred in a TV pilot called Surf Scene (1963) and hosted and performed in the now legendary concert film The T.A.M.I. Show (1964). Berry was also producing other acts during this period, among them The Rip Chords, The Angels, Shelley Fabares, Johnny Crawford (from The Rifleman), and Jill Gibson, his girlfriend for a time, and later a temporary member of The Mamas and the Papas.
1963-64 was their peak, but they had a brief period of more modest success, with several more top 40 hits: “Sidewalk Surfing” (about skateboarding) and the post-surf numbers “You Really Know How to Hurt a Guy” (#27, 1965) and “I Found a Girl” (#30, 1965). Then came a number of mis-steps and misfortunes that began to take their toll just as Jan and Dean were primed to ascend to new heights. In summer 1965 the pair had just started shooting a new movie for Paramount called Easy Come, Easy Go co-starring Terry-Thomas when Berry and the film’s director Barry Shear (who later made Wild in the Streets and The Todd Killings) were severely injured in a train accident. The movie was scrapped. In fall of that year they released the LP Folk ‘n’ Roll, which contained the uncool track “Universal Coward” an answer song to Donovan’s “Universal Soldier” (penned by Buffy St. Marie), a move not calculated to endear the duo to the burgeoning counterculture.
In spring 1966, their new single was — get this — “Batman”, a song inspired by the hit TV show, and quite a different tune for that show’s theme song. It’s a pretty amazing record, creative, experimental, and entertaining. Definitely a novelty song, but looking ahead to the psychedelic era. It’s a pretty elaborate track, too complex to sing along with or dance to, and you can see why it only went to #66. As a consolation prize, the B side, “Bucket T”, was covered by The Who later that year, with Keith Moon on vocals. During this period, Jan and Dean also recorded a comedy record called Filet of Soul. I find all of this especially enlightening in light of the fact that it was the same period when Brian Wilson began his Smile sessions, which he was describing as a comedy project in certain stages of its production, and many tracks of which still show that intention (e.g. “Heroes and Villains”).
The in April, 1966, the turning point. Berry suffered near fatal injuries when he smashed up his car — at a point not far from the actual Dead Man’s Curve, as it happens. He was in a coma for two months, and sustained brain damage and partial paralysis, from which it took him years to recover (though he never recovered fully). Ironically, while he was laid up, one of the team’s older tracks “Popcycle” was released as a single and went all the way to #21. A few months later, Torrence released the single “Yellow Balloon”, credited to Jan and Dean, and it went to #111. A few months later, the folks who’d written the song released their own version and it went to #25.
Finally, in late 1967, Berry tried to get back to work. He and Torrence recorded material that was to be a psychedelic LP called Carnival of Sound. Great title! Calls to mind that 1962 movie Carnival of Souls and the elusive experimental Beatles track “Carnival of Light”. The record was not released in its own time, and one can readily hear why. It’s a disappointment, to put it charitably. Nonetheless, it was finally released in 2010 as a historical curiosity, one imagines, as much as anything else.
The vanishing of Jan and Dean at this time has an interesting parallel in what The Beach Boys were going through at the same time. This was when Brian Wilson suffered his breakdown, and the band’s magical chain of hit singles finally ended, although they managed to soldier on for years through the rough times in a way that Jan and Dean did not. Torrence actually continued to have success in the music business in a completely different realm. He designed numerous award-winning album covers for artists like The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Pollution (featuring Dobie Gray).
Then a few years later — a comeback. There was a 1974 article about what had become of them in Rolling Stone magazine, followed by the nostalgia craze spawned by Happy Days etc. The Beach Boys had a major comeback at around this time, and Jan and Dean were back on the map.
This was the period when your correspondent first learned about them, largely through a made-for-tv bio-called Dead Man’s Curve (1978) starring Richard Hatch of Battlestar Gallactica and Bruce Davison (not to be confused with Bruce Johnston), along with Wolfman Jack, Dick Clark, and Beach Boys Mike Love and Bruce Johnston. I have to editorialize here and point out that the actors’ hair in the film was preposterous in its anachronism:
This is what Jan and Dean looked like back in the day:
Jan and Dean also appeared on Sha Na Na and toured again for a time in the late ’70s and ’80s, working the oldies circuit. Jan Berry died of a seizure in 2004, surely the final shoe dropping from his 1966 accident, although it was a blessing that he got that reprieve which lasted nearly 40 years.
Their official website is here.
For more on show biz history, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, And please stay tuned for my upcoming Electric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety