Jan and Dean

All Music Guide:

It's almost too easy to underestimate the importance of Jan & Dean in the history of rock & roll and its evolution into rock. The mere mention of their name today evokes images of suntanned California teens dancing and surfing on the beaches of Malibu. The ultimate good-time music act of the early '60s -- who only earned one gold record (for "Surf City") -- the duo get credit for inspiring lots of smiles and providing the soundtrack to countless parties, but few listeners, critics, or pop culture historians appreciate just how important they were musically during the first half of the 1960s, or how long it took them to achieve the level of craftsmanship that characterized their music as much as their high harmonies and catchy choruses. Even becoming "Jan & Dean" wasn't easy for this duo.

Jan Berry (born April 3, 1941) and Dean Torrence (born March 10, 1940) met at University High School in West Los Angeles, where they were classmates and members of the football team. They began singing together with some other friends, which eventually led to the formation of a performing group, the Barons, who specialized in doo wop music of the period -- among the songs they covered were "Get a Job," "Hushabye," and "Short Shorts." The group competed in a high-school talent contest, which required more rehearsal than usual and resulted in their spending a lot of time in Jan Berry's garage, which had been outfitted as an amateur recording studio, complete with a pair of reel-to-reel tape machines and a piano; when an arrangement got very complex and ambitious, they even pressed into service a couple of friends from the neighborhood, future Beach Boys member and producer Bruce Johnston on the piano and star drummer Sandy Nelson. Berry was already becoming experienced in the studio -- he'd learned how to create an echo-delay effect between the two machines (this feature would later become standard on Ampex machines, but it was a big deal in 1958) and was learning how to hear all of the subtle details that creep into multiple performances of a piece and perceive how they might fit together to best advantage. The Barons did the show and, as an amateur group without particular plans, went their separate ways. Berry kept getting any of them who were willing to show up together at his parents' home, however, and recording take after take of various songs, as many as 50, according to Torrence. He would experiment with them by splicing parts of each take together, coming up with completed versions that were larger than the sum of the individual parts.

The whole point in those days of just about any voluntary male teen activity was (what else?) to impress girls, and that was how Berry's recording career began: a member of the fairer sex suggested, almost as a dare, that he and his friends would be really cool if they made records, and Berry took her up on it. The problem of what to record proved vexing until one of the other former members of the Barons, Arnie Ginsburg, showed up on a day when Berry and Torrence were struggling with the question, proposing a song about a stripper with the stage name Jenny Lee ("the Bazoom Girl"), who was appearing at a strip joint in Los Angeles. Ginsburg and Berry came up with the song, and Berry and Torrence worked on it, although it fell to Berry and Ginsburg to put the final vocals down, Torrence having been called up for his obligatory six months' service in the army reserve.

Berry was getting the demo of "Jennie Lee," as it was titled, transferred to disc at a studio when producer Joe Lubin, who worked for the Arwin Records label (a small recording enterprise owned by Marty Melcher, the husband of Doris Day and the father of future Byrds and Paul Revere & the Raiders producer Terry Melcher), heard the song and offered to buy it. Lubin believed that something could be made out of the song, and Berry happily sold him the master. Meanwhile, Torrence, who was part of the team that Berry intended to debut before the public, was about to go into the army. Lubin overdubbed a band led by Don Ralke on top of the basic track of two vocals, a piano, and percussion, and issued the song on Arwin in the late winter of 1958. The single came out credited to Jan & Arnie, Ginsburg having replaced Torrance in the combo, and rose to number eight nationally that summer. Jan & Arnie appeared on American Bandstand and rubbed shoulders with many of the top singing stars of the period and seemed headed for lasting stardom, while Torrence was stuck in the army.

"Jennie Lee" was a promising start, made more so by the brash, defiant sound of the singing, which seemed to embody the essence of teenage attitude. Arwin tried two follow-ups that performed far less well, and by the late fall of 1958, with show business looking a lot less promising, Ginsburg left the duo. Luckily, Torrence's army service ended just then and Berry asked him if he could try singing together again. The duo also decided to get some help from a pair of new producers -- Lubin having run out his string with them at Arwin -- Herb Alpert, a jazz trumpet player with major ambitions, and his songwriting partner, Lou Adler, who got them onto the Dore Records label. The four of them ran through several demos before finding "Baby Talk," which Jan & Dean recorded in Berry's home studio, exactly like "Jennie Lee," before adding on the full backing band. "Baby Talk" ended up making number ten nationally during the summer of 1959, and Jan & Dean were on their way. Over the next year, they made the rounds of television music showcases, performed at concerts, and cut a series of remakes of R&B harmony vocal classics, including their version of "Gee" by the Crows.

There were still problems to be overcome, however. They felt that Dore Records was a dead end in terms of getting them wider national exposure, and wanted to sign with a major label. The most enticing of these possibilities came in the form of an offer from Liberty Records, a relatively new Los Angeles-based company that seemed to have a better, stronger commitment to rock & roll than most of the large established companies and was flush with cash thanks to hit singles by Ricky Nelson and smash albums by Julie London. They desperately wanted to be on Liberty, and Adler and Alpert were prepared to go with them as producers, but even this switch wasn't easy to accomplish. Astonishingly in retrospect, Liberty balked at releasing "Heart and Soul," a new recording of the duo that they were positive would hit, but which Liberty rejected. Their version of the Hoagy Carmichael/Frank Loesser standard got to number 25 nationally (in direct competition with a version of the same song by the Cleftones) in the summer of 1961, released on Challenge Records, a company owned by Gene Autry. Even though it wasn't a hit for Liberty, the duo's career at the new label was made -- the company signed them, and over the next two years, Jan & Dean kept releasing singles in a doo wop vein, trying to emulate the success of their three hit singles.

Not one of them charted higher than number 69, however, and it seemed as though Jan & Dean had run out their string. In fact, they'd run into a trough in their success, owing to the weak material that they were receiving from their publisher, Aldon Music (amazingly, home of Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann, and Cynthia Weil, et al., but unable to come up with first-rate material for the team). Instead, they began writing their own material and producing themselves.

They began their climb back to success with Berry's first official production, "Linda," which got to number 28 in early 1963, their best chart placement in two years. Fate then played a hand when Jan & Dean played some shows with the Beach Boys, a new band from Hawthorne, CA, whose harmony singing was very similar to theirs. The Beach Boys were currently enjoying their first Top Ten national hit, and the group backed the duo at their shows -- all of them took an immediate liking to each other, especially Brian Wilson and Berry. Both were as much architects of sound as they were musicians, with definite ideas about the shape of the sound they wanted.

Wilson had been experiencing difficulty in finishing a song called "Surf City," and gave it to Berry to finish for Jan & Dean. Cut in early 1963 with Wilson also singing on it, "Surf City," released in March of that year, became Jan & Dean's first number one single. Listened to even four decades later, "Surf City" is a marvel to behold -- the Berry/Wilson composition was like a miniature teenage movie, setting a scene and depicting action worthy of one of the beach party films of the period, with layer upon layer of activity that moved forward with extraordinary energy.

The single also heralded a major change in their sound as they jumped headfirst into surf music. For the next few years, the duo's sound was rooted in a surf-guitar sound acquired from guitarist Dick Dale by way of the Beach Boys and increasingly bold use of harmony singing. "Honolulu Lulu" followed at number 11 late that summer, while "Drag City" rose to number ten early that winter, and "Dead Man's Curve" went to number eight the next spring. The duo might've been expected to lose momentum with the advent of the British Invasion in 1964, but that summer they hit number three with "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena," and "Ride the Wild Surf" got to number 16 that fall. Jan & Dean were considered important enough to rate a spot as hosts of the concert film The T.A.M.I. Show in 1964.

Jan & Dean's success as singles artists during this period tends to obscure the virtues of their LPs. Beginning with the Drag City album, in particular -- which was their first LP of all original material -- their albums showed a level of care and sophistication in the production and the selection of tracks that was unusual, if not extraordinary, for most rock & roll LPs in 1963. The duo's music grew in complexity in 1964, Berry attempting ever more daring productions behind their songs -- it was seldom cited by historians or critics for this virtue, but the single "Dead Man's Curve," recorded after the version that appeared on Drag City, involved 18 separate vocal parts. Their recordings of "Sidewalk Surfin'" and "Ride the Wild Surf" were also exceptionally ambitious, but their complexity in the recording studio was masked by the overt, lighthearted fun of their subject matter as songs. The Beach Boys ran the risk of being similarly underrated, except that their singles took on a more lyrical, seriously romantic veneer that allowed them to be taken more seriously, at least by rock music critics and listeners. Jan & Dean's music, by contrast, was too much fun to be taken seriously. They even ended up in occasional conflict with their record company, as Liberty attempted to release singles that the duo felt were less than first-rate, efforts that were usually blocked. It was easy to overlook, amid the fun, the craftsmanship of their work. The latter even came to rub off on the Beach Boys.

As important as their own music was, the influence that the duo had on rock music by way of the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson was equally great, and perhaps greater. When he'd first met Berry, Wilson was trying to shape the group's sound as well as writing or co-writing most of the songs and playing bass on-stage. It was Berry who showed Wilson the other side of the coin, in terms of the relationship of the Beach Boys and Jan & Dean; the Beach Boys were a self-contained group, which made them ideal to back the duo on-stage in those early gigs together, but by the same token, on their records, Jan & Dean used the top studio musicians in Los Angeles, including Hal Blaine, Earl Palmer, and Glen Campbell. By late 1964, Wilson had given up playing with the group to concentrate on writing and producing the group's recordings, but was stymied by the group's tour commitments, in terms of getting them into the studio. Berry pointed out that there was no reason for the Beach Boys not to use those same musicians and other session men; he also pointed out that no listeners really cared much if Dennis Wilson or Carl Wilson played drums or guitar on the group's records.

Wilson began using the same session musicians that Jan & Dean did, and the result was the opening of a golden age in the history of the Beach Boys, starting with Today! and culminating with Pet Sounds and the never-issued SMiLE. No one knew (though one could have guessed on Pet Sounds) that the group (apart from Carl Wilson's lead guitar) didn't play on those records or most of the singles from this era; rather, what mattered was that the records themselves were some of the best-sounding of the period.

By 1965, Jan & Dean's chart successes had slackened somewhat. They still placed records in the Top 30 and tried jumping on several pop culture bandwagons, including albums devoted to folk-rock and the singles and albums hooked on the craze surrounding the then-new Batman television series. Berry even produced and arranged an instrumental album, Pop Symphony No. 1, featuring orchestral versions of the group's hits. At the same time, after several years of declining offers to act in movies, they'd finally agreed in 1966 to do a film and filmed a television pilot that was to have aired that summer. With 28 charting singles -- seven of them in the Top Ten -- in the space of seven years, they had little left to prove or conquer, except maybe the test of longevity.

The duo's success ended with Berry's near-fatal automobile accident in April of 1966. He wasn't even believed to be alive when the police arrived at the wreck of his Corvette Stingray and there was barely any heart beat when he was cut out of the car. It took years for Berry to recover even partially, learning how to walk and talk all over again, and the duo's music, apart from a group of releases on Warner Bros. and Columbia that were scarcely heard, was relegated to the status of oldies. Any musical advancement was impossible in the circumstances, and Torrence, who'd always had an interest in art, became a successful graphic designer, as well as continuing to sing on other artists' records. Eventually the two did resume touring, and their shows were well-received for the good-time vibes the duo and their band generated, but their days as a musical influence were over. Their time playing music, however, was not over. The duo resumed touring in the '80s including a two-week engagement in the People's Republic of China in 1986. They continued to perform '90s as Berry's health permitted and although there were no new Jan & Dean recordings, Jan released a solo album titled Second Wave in 1997. In 2004 Jan Berry passed away after suffering a seizure; he was 62.

Jan & Dean were the subject of a TV movie in the late '70s and remained much loved (if not sufficiently respected or appreciated) icons of early-'60s rock & roll. Beginning in the 1970s with the release of the Legendary Masters double LP, their music has been heavily anthologized, and the 1990s saw the reissue of their entire Liberty Records LP catalog on CD, as well as more compilations.

Wikipedia:

Jan and Dean were a rock and roll duo, popular from the late 1950s through the mid 1960s, consisting of Jan Berry and Dean Torrence. They were pioneers of the vocal "surf music" craze that was popularized by The Beach Boys. Among their most successful songs was "Surf City" , which topped both the Billboard and Cashbox music charts in June 1963; "Drag City", which was a #10 hit on both the Billboard and Cashbox charts in 1963; and their cover of the Beach Boys' "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena", which peaked at #3. "Dead Man's Curve", which reached #8 on the Billboard charts in 1964, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008.

In 1972 Torrence won the Grammy Award for Best Album Cover for the psychedelic rock band Pollution's first eponymous 1971 album, and was nominated three other times in the same category for albums of The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

Early lives

William Jan Berry (born in Los Angeles, California April 3, 1941; died March 26, 2004), was the son of aeronautical engineer William L. Berry (born December 7, 1909 in The Bronx, NY; died December 19, 2004 in Camarillo, California), who had been project manager of the "Spruce Goose" and flown on its only flight with Howard Hughes, and Clara Lorentze Mustad Berry (born September 2, 1919 in Bergen, Norway; died July 9, 2009).

Dean Ormsby Torrence (born Los Angeles, California March 10, 1940), is the son of Natalie Ormsby Torrence (born April 10, 1911 in California; died August 10, 2008 in Los Angeles, California) and Maurice Dean Torrence (born December 5, 1907 in South Dakota; died November 16, 1997 in Los Angeles, California), a graduate of Stanford University, who was a sales manager at the Wilshire Oil Company.

Background

Berry and Torrence met while students at Emerson Junior High School in Westwood, Los Angeles and were both on the school's football team. By 1957 they were students in the Vagabond Class of 1958 at the nearby University High School, where again they were on the school's football team, the Warriors. Berry and Torrence had adjoining lockers, and after football practice, they began harmonizing together in the showers with several other football players.

The Barons

In order to enter at a talent competition at University High School, Berry and Torrance helped form a doo-wop group]] known as "The Barons" (named after their high school's Hi-Y club, where they were members), which comprised fellow University High students William "Chuck" Steele (lead singer), Arnold P. "Arnie" Ginsburg (born November 19, 1939) (1st tenor), Wallace S. "Wally" Yagi (born 20 July 1940) (2nd tenor), John 'Sagi" Seligman (2nd tenor), with Berry singing bass, and Torrence providing falsetto. During its short duration, Sandy Nelson, a neighbor of Torrence, played drums, and future Beach Boy Bruce Johnston, occasionally sang and played piano. The Barons rehearsed for hours in the garage of Berry's parents' home at 1111 Linda Flora Drive, Bel Air, where Berry's father provided an upright piano and two two-track Ampex reel-to-reel tape recorders. During primitive recording sessions in the garage, Berry served as producer and arranger, and experimented with multi-part vocal arrangements (five years before he started working professionally with Brian Wilson)

In 1958 The Barons performed to popular acclaim at the talent competition at University High School, covering contemporary hits like "Get a Job", "Rock and Roll Is Here To Stay", and "Short Shorts". However, after the contest various members of The Barons drifted away, leaving only Berry and Torrance, who tried to write their own songs.

Jan & Arnie

After being inspired by a poster featuring a local, Hollywood burlesque performer Virginia Lee Hicks, who was then performing as Jennie Lee, the "Bazoom Girl", at the New Follies Burlesk at 548 S. Main St, Los Angeles, Ginsburg wrote a tribute song "Jennie Lee" that he brought to Berry and Torrance. Berry adapted Civil War tune "Aura Lea" and arranged the harmonies. After weeks of practice, Berry, Ginsburg, and Torrance planned to record a demo recording in Berry's garage, but Torrance was conscripted into the United States Army Reserve forcing Berry and Ginsburg to record "Jennie Lee" without Torrance, with Berry's friend and fellow University High student Donald J. Altfeld (born March 18, 1940 in Los Angeles, California) "belting out the rhythm on a children's metal high chair". The next day Berry took their recording to Radio Recorders, a small Hollywood recording studio, to have it transferred to an acetate disc. Joe Lubin, Vice President and Head of A & R of Doris Day and Martin Melcher's Arwin Records, was impressed and offered to add instruments and to release it through Arwin. In March 1958, the fathers of Berry and Ginsburg signed contracts authorizing Lubin to produce, arrange, and manage their sons.

Berry and Ginsburg, now christened "Jan & Arnie", re-recorded their vocals on a professional recording system. Produced by Lubin, "Jennie Lee" (Arwin 108), backed with "Gotta Get a Date" (credited to Ginsburg, Berry & Lubin), became a surprise commercial success. According to Berry's biographer Mark A. Moore, "The song (with backing vocals, plus additional instruments added by the Ernie Freeman combo) had a raucous R&B flavor, with a bouncing bomp-bomp vocal hook that would become a signature from Jan on future recordings." Distributed by Dot Records, "Jennie Lee" was released in mid-April, entered the charts on May 10, 1958, the same day they appeared on ABC's Dick Clark Show. "Jennie Lee" peaked at #3 on the Cash Box charts on June 21, 1958, #4 on the R&B charts, and #8 on the Billboard charts on June 30, 1958. Billy Ward and His Dominoes's R&B cover of "Jennie Lee" reached #55 in the Pop charts in June 1958, while other cover versions including that of Moon Mullican (Coral 9-61994) and Bobby Phillips & the Toppers (Tops 45-R422-49), released in 1958 failed to chart.

In July 1958 Jan & Arnie released their second single, "Gas Money" backed with "Bonnie Lou" (Arwin 111), both written by Berry, Ginsburg, and Altfeld. Like "Jennie Lee", "Gas Money" contained a few elements of what would later become surf music. It entered the Billboard charts on August 24, 1958, and peaked at #81 a week later. With Sheb Wooley, The Champs, Link Wray and his Ray Men, Frankie Avalon, The Kalin Twins, and Dicky Doo & The Don'ts, Jan & Arnie were a featured act on the Summer Dance Party that toured the US East Coast, including Pennyslvania, Massachusetts, and Connecticut in July 1958. By the end of the month, they traveled to Manhattan to appear on ABC's Dick Clark Show.

On August 24, 1958, Jan & Arnie played in a live show hosted by Dick Clark that featured Bobby Darin, the Champs, Sheb Wooley, The Blossoms, The Six Teens, Jerry Wallace, Jack Jones, Rod McKuen, and the Ernie Freeman Orchestra in front of nearly 12,000 fans at the first rock-n-roll show ever held at the Hollywood Bowl.

By September 6, 1958, Jan & Arnie's third and final single, "The Beat That Can't Be Beat" backed with "I Love Linda" (Arwin 113), again composed by the Berry, Ginsburg, and Altfeld team, was released. However this single failed to chart, due in part to a lack of distribution. On October 19, 1958 Jan & Arnie performed "The Beat That Can't Be Beat" on CBS's Jack Benny Show.

Ginsburg recorded "Kathy Cryin' Heart", a catchy number laced with the ironic humour, that was backed with "Catching Spies", a raw sounding garage number. These songs were unreleased.

By the end of the year, when Torrence had completed his six-month stint at Fort Ord, Ginsburg had become disenchanted with the music business. Ginsburg enrolled in the School of Architecture and Design at the University of Southern California, and graduated in the field of product design in 1966. After graduation, Ginsburg worked for several noted Los Angeles architects, among them Charles Eames. In December 1973 he was granted a U.S. Patent for a table he designed. Arn Ginsburg moved to Santa Barbara, California in 1975, where he worked as an architectural designer, designing the innovative Ginsburg House. In September 1976 Ginsburg and Michael W. O'Neill were granted a patent for a portable batting cage.

Early Years: 1959-1962

After Torrence returned from a six-month compulsory stint in the US Army Reserve, Berry and Torrence began to make music as "Jan and Dean." 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).

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.

Part-time musicians

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.

Surf's golden boys: 1963–1964

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, 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.

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.

Changing times: 1965–1966

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.

Berry's car wreck and its aftermath: 1966–1968

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.

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.

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.

Further progress: 1969–1978

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. 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.

Back on the road: 1978–Present

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.

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. 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.

Jan and Dean's place in rock history

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. 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. Brian Wilson has cited Berry as having a direct impact on his own growth as a record producer.

In an interview conducted by Jan & Dean fan and historian David Beard for the Collectors' Choice release, Jan & Dean The Complete Liberty Singles, 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.

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.

Footnotes