Here’s some appropriate, end-of-summer listening: until 1963, Jan & Dean were an unremarkable duo churning out middling chart-sitters such as “A Sunday Kind of Love” and “When I Learned to Cry.” The distinctive choirboy sound of the Brian Wilson cast-off “Surf City” changed all that in 1963, setting their crash course on a road that literally wiped out.
Jan & Dean: The Complete Liberty Singles is the first effort to compile the Southern California pair’s ride up the charts via their Liberty releases. The 2-CD set tracks them through 42 songs celebrating the trifecta of American 1950s boyhood: surfing, cars, and girls. The good fortune of Jan Berry and Dean Torrence being in the right place at the right time meant they had stellar accompaniment from the Wrecking Crew, and Wilson was a chief collaborator/songwriter/singer on some of their best-known hits.
1963’s “Surf City” was their only No. 1 hit, mining the ocean themes so popular that year with “Wipeout” and “Surfin’ USA” also in the charts, but Jan & Dean did well to shift gears with “Drag City.” “Burn up that quarter mile,” the song opened, a rallying cry for a nation glorying in new interstate highways and guilt-free gas guzzling. The hot rod themes continued with “Dead Man’s Curve,” “My Mighty GTO,” and “Little Old Lady from Pasadena,” enduring with its sing-song “Go, granny, go, granny, go, granny, go” chorus amid images of a golden California lifestyle.
The bully on the beach was the British Invasion. Once the Beatles, Stones, and their cohorts muddied the waters with blues-rock, the race was on. Jan & Dean wiped out with a series of singles that changed musical direction back to surf then to SoCal pop, both efforts crashing and burning. When Jan Berry wrecked his Corvette near the infamous Dead Man’s Curve’s, the duo’s career on the charts went up in smoke and twisted metal.
The extensive dual liner notes from David Beard and set producer Ed Osbourne flesh out the story of Jan & Dean, sort of. Osbourne makes a solid case for Jan Berry as one of the underrated architects of the Southern California sound but Beard’s essay with Torrence is stiff and haltingly written. That the layout is sloppy and font tiny doesn’t help.
Yet there’s a sweetness about Jan & Dean’s music that doesn’t fade when the sun sets, and The Complete Liberty Singles evokes it without artifice. It’s part eternal youth and part yearning for the past, the two best sentiments to conjure when nostalgia comes knocking.
This article appears in August 29 • 2008.