Posted on 03/27/2004 11:45:44 AM PST by Chi-townChief
LOS ANGELES - Jan Berry, a member of the duo Jan & Dean that had the 1960s surf-music hits "Deadman's Curve" and "Little Old Lady from Pasadena," has died. He was 62.
Berry had a seizure and stopped breathing Friday at his home. He was pronounced dead that evening at a hospital, said his wife, Gertie Berry.
He had been in poor health recently from the lingering effects of brain damage from a 1966 car crash.
Jan & Dean had a string of hits and 10 gold records in the 1960s with their tales of Southern California. Among them were 1964's "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena," about a hotrod racing grandma, and "Surf City," with its lines about taking the station wagon to a place where there are "two girls for every boy."
With Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, William Jan Berry co-wrote the lyrics for "Surf City" and "Deadman's Curve," which featured the driving guitar licks and falsetto crooning of the wildly popular surf music.
Berry's hit-making career with high school friend Dean Torrence was cut short in 1966 when Berry's speeding Corvette hit a parked truck and he suffered severe brain damage that left him partially paralyzed and unable to talk.
His recovery was slow, but eventually he was able to resume singing and writing songs.
In addition to his wife, Berry is survived by his parents, William and Clara Berry of Camarillo; three brothers and three sisters.
Excellent. Nice sendoff for Jan, even if not planned as such.
I hope it's an annual event and they move it up a day.
Maybe see ya' next year, though I'll be on an old bike rather than in an old car, I reckon.
Hey, this'd make a pretty good FReeper run, as well!
Hmmm. I have the cars but can't drive anything with a standard. At least until the damn cast comes off.
Shoot, they even had us surfin' in the Midwest on Lake Michigan and the Ohio and Wabash rivers....
I've been pulling a few MP3 and other sound files and posting a few of the better ones here. Here's one I bet most of the J&D fans haven't heard before! Now what HAVE you gone and done to yourself...or did you forget to duck and let someone else do it to ya...?
Hey Onyx: You know what day it is today?
All that, and age, of course, as well. None of us are the same now as then.
And though the following pretty well convinces me that his creative and reflective spark was burning just as bright as ever, if maybe he was a little more tired recently and it took him a while longer, I'll bet you this: He may have withered a bit over the years, but now he's going to be forever young again, and get that lost time and those lost years back, somewhere where it's always a California summer of many years ago. REMEMBER ME WHEN I'M GONE . . .
Jan's response to a recent request from Larry King of CNN (with a little help from a friend) . . .
Remember Me When I'm Gone . . . by Jan Berry
hen I was young I had all the advantages. My father worked for Howard Hughes, we lived in Bel Air. I went to the best schools, and got the best girls. My intelligence quotient was well above average; and yet I could be a rebellious, troublesome punk who brought more than a little anxiety to my parents. That sounds normal enough; but the truth is, nothing about my life has been ordinary.
I was famous before my eighteenth birthday; and I relished all that came with that. Hit records, national television, and beautiful women. We were golden boys in an era when things like rock-n-roll and television were in their infancy. But I stayed in school, taking music theory classes in college, majoring in zoology, and eventually entering medical school. I lived two lives—vocal harmonies and biochemistry. Recording studios and lab specimens, Dick Clark and bright classrooms. I couldn't get enough. I wanted to do it all. I wrote and arranged music, and produced hit records at all hours of the night and weekends. In a one-year span at our peak, we had five top-ten records in a row. We had movie and television deals. What didn't we have? And through it all, it was my way, or the highway. Take it, or leave it. I'll admit that. Have I mentioned that I'm an Aries?
That's a brief sketch. But that's who I was. That's how I operated, blazing my own trail (some would say) leaving people in flames around me. It's a popular notion about me; and I can appreciate it, to a degree. But the fact is I had plans. I had big plans. I knew exactly what I wanted—for my life, for my career; and let me tell you a little secret: I was pulling it off. Things were slowly falling into place for me, despite a weary string of business and personal problems. I mean, a few dim spots notwithstanding, my future never looked brighter. Can you appreciate that?
But that's when it happens—when you're on the brink, when your ducks are all lined up, and you have them just so. Never assume you have everything pegged. Never tweak that last duck, and pat yourself on the back, and take everything else for granted. Because that's when god rips the mike out of your hand and says, out of nowhere, you might not come back from Dead Man's Curve. Say what? That's when you wake up in darkness, fumbling for the light switch.
Nine days after my twenty-fifth birthday I smashed my Corvette into a parked gardener's truck on a residential street in Beverly Hills. A gardener's truck—can you believe that? The old steering wheel sandwich, with a windshield wrap, and fiberglass on the side. And yes, I was speeding. Why? Ask people who knew me, and they'll offer some wisecrack about my hell-for-leather driving. Why? Because that's who I was, and let's face it, god hadn't yet declared that my show (my life) was being canceled. What else can I say?
I use the word god, by the way, to acknowledge whatever higher power is running this ride we're on. God, nature, fate, karma; call it what you will. But it's there, and it knows everything. Just ask all the dead people.
I woke up a month later—in some frightening new universe, dark and lonely. People were there, but at first they didn't mean anything to me. I tried to speak and couldn't. My body was different, broken—and my mind didn't have complete control over it.
Listen carefully. It's a complicated situation; but we'll reduce it to three foreign-sounding clinical words: aphasia, apraxia, and hemiperesis. Taken together, they mean simply that the language mechanism for communicating my thoughts was damaged; an impairment in the sequencing of speech sounds left me groping for words; and the right half of my body was partially paralyzed. I'll take Why Me for one thousand, Alex. I'm Mr. Everything with a genius-level IQ, and this is how I end up? This is what I get for my efforts?
I was enraged and bewildered—to understate an understatement. My parents were told to prepare for the reality that I may never walk or talk again. How's that for a pretty picture? But I was alive. My family and friends lavished warmth and attention on me. But seeing the pain, horror, and pity in their faces (and knowing I was the cause of it) made me long for the darkness again. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Pride can bore a hole in even the hardest sense of self; and the resulting infection can kill you—if you let it.
I worked with speech and physical therapists. La, La, La. Calamity, calamity. Speak the speech as it is spoken. Lean on the bars, and drag one foot in front of the other. Cake and cookies, cheese and crackers, make silly faces and play like you're chewing. Tongue straight out; lick around lips in a circle. Is this really happening? In an effort to overcome the obstacles, I applied the headstrong drive and determination that has always been with me. No. Do it myself. But progress was slow, and I suffered high degrees of frustration and severe depression. I lashed out at people who loved me—at people who were trying to help me.
But you set goals, and chart a course toward achieving them. That's how I've always operated; and music was the light at the end of my dark tunnel. The right hemisphere of my brain was less affected by the trauma, thus preserving a large portion of my pre-accident musical abilities. The mysteries of cerebral circuitry are still confounding the best scientists and doctors. But my circumstances offer supporting evidence that the nervous system processes verbal symbols and musical symbols (and abilities) in different ways. I'm slow, but I can still read, write, and arrange music. Words are a different matter altogether. I can't tell you about it easily, but I can do music, if you give me the time. Think about that.
I had a lifeline, and with the help of some special people and friends, I threw myself into making a return to the studio—long before others thought I was ready. My assortment of lawyers, accountants, and business associates (both new and from my previous life) saw me as a bothersome individual who might limp into their offices with mussed hair, no shirt, perhaps a straw hat, or rumpled clothing, making belligerent demands that were difficult to understand. Then they said I called on the phone too much. He's a telephone problem, they said. I, oblivious to how others saw and heard me, just wondered why it was so damn hard to get down to the business of getting me back in business. What is wrong with you people?
I was impatient and aggressive. I was childlike. I scared people. I caused problems for people, for my family, and I caused enormous sums of money to be spent in the studio. But guess what? I started producing music again; and in time I started singing on my own again. Melody flows more easily than the spoken word. What is right hemisphere, Alex? Meanwhile, my doctors and psychiatrists dutifully took notes on it all. In another life I was fascinated by science; and now I'm fodder for those doing the studying. I'm someone else's experiment. That's a nice, scary little circle to contemplate, isn't it?
My father was my conservator. He made adjustments in his own busy life to help me live mine. He made tough and important decisions on my behalf. And I have to admit that I often fought him over it, fiercely at times. He preserved the documentary evidence of my life and career, and took notes chronicling my long journey toward recovery. That must have been a nightmare diary for him (and my entire family) to keep. But it has helped preserve my story—and my legacy. It's not always pleasant, but it's there. If I haven't said it before, I'm saying it now. Thank you, Dad. I love you. My family has been through the ringer over me—my wonderful mother, my brothers and sisters. I love you all.
Things progressed for me—but the road was not a smooth one. I continued to write, produce, and release music. Journalists wrote about my struggles; and a fictionalized account of the story was told in a movie on national television. Suddenly, there was a lot of new interest in my life and career; and my partner, Dean Torrence, helped pave the way for us to return to the stage for live performances. I wanted to re-connect with the fans. All these years later, people—young and old—still enjoy seeing us on-stage together. Thanks, partner.
Now a biographer (a writer and historian) is examining the documentary evidence of my life and career—my own voluminous archive of materials detailing both the workings of my public career and the often-sensitive details of my private life. In fact, he's helping me write this piece you have in your hands here. But you probably already guessed that. It's liberating—a fluid voice by proxy. He's interviewing scores of my old friends and professional associates. When I think about that, it scares the righteous hell out of me; but at the same time it fills me with a sense of hope. My own voice is in there, among all the musty papers, and the memories of others. A story I could never tell on my own is emerging; and yet I'm the one telling it all along. Can you dig that?
Brain damage. It's a trip you don't come down from—a permanent, surrealistic jaunt in the express lane. You live with it. You learn to use it. I have an augmented memory—recollections of the original me from another life, recollections from this life, and things people have told me about my past. My memory can often be triggered in a meaningful way by specific names or items from my own history—and that's always interesting. But thirty-seven years on, I still grope for the right words; and I still have to study the lyrics to even my most famous songs—one line at a time—in order to remember them and deliver them on-stage. It's difficult for me to move around. I know what I want to say, but it's hard to say it. Could you repeat the question? And it gets worse with age. I know what I mean, but sometimes it sounds to others like I watch the couch and sit on the television. I freak over changes in my routine. My wife takes care of me. It's hard for us. We make each other crazy at times, but we're still here. I love you, too, baby.
You live with it. You embrace it. Because there's only one alternative—which brings me to the whole point of this little exercise. How do I want people to remember me when I am gone? Creepy question, Larry, but I'm glad you asked it. I don't plan on going anywhere anytime soon; but I'll play along. It's a simple question, with two simple answers.
First, I want to be remembered as one of the best record producers of my era. There it is. I'm not ashamed to admit that. I want my due, and not one bit more. I was good; and I influenced some close associates who went on to become well-known artists and record producers. I haven't had a public voice for a lot of years, and my professional legacy has become distorted and half-buried. Some important longtime friends and creative associates (you know who you are) have always acknowledged who I really was—and they're beginning to make it more public. Stay tuned.
But more importantly, a curious thing happened along the way, during this long strange trip I've been on. I became a high profile inspiration for survivors of traumatic brain injury. I didn't see that coming, and never would have dreamed it. But all of a sudden, there it was. The mantle was thrust upon me—and I embrace it wholeheartedly. People who have had similar misfortunes come up to me after performances, some of them in wheelchairs, and explain how my story has inspired them to find their own way again. They send me letters, and tell my family members of their experiences. It's overwhelming, and it's humbling—because I know where they are. I know where they've been, and I'd like to have an impact on where they're going, spiritually and emotionally. It's one more reason why individual struggle and accomplishment is so important. And it's why we started a center for the brain injured in my name back in the Eighties.
So take it from me, right now. You have to keep on going—no matter what your struggle is, regardless of your handicap. I know it sounds cliché, but humor me for a moment. You have to fight the good fight. Let's just get all of the old chestnuts out of the way up front: Never give up. Persevere. Stay positive. You can do it. Stay focused, one day at a time, blah-blah-blah, ad infinitum. They can be hollow words, and you have to dig deep to reach the core truth they represent. Don't be afraid to find it; and don't be afraid of what people might think of you along the way.
Because the darkness will come, trust me on that. It will find you, and it will scare you like you've never been scared before. It will cloak you with a negative force the likes of which you've never known. It will make you question reality, and disbelieve all answers to the contrary—and it's not a one-time struggle. That's the kicker. You don't beat the darkness permanently. It returns, relentlessly; and you have to be prepared to battle it on your own terms, with your own proven tools for coping.
Believe me when I say I've been there. I know what it's like to be unable to communicate effectively. I know what it's like to be cast aside as though you're not important. I know what it's like to have people sneer and snicker at you. I know what it's like for people (even in positions of authority) to automatically assume you're drunk, on drugs, or mentally challenged. I know how it feels to seek friendship and companionship, only to be taken advantage of by others for their own personal gain. My family's good-faith efforts have gone awry in some cases, allowing my recordings and sensitive information about me to get into the wrong hands over the years. It hurts.
It's a tough row to hoe. And the truth is, I haven't always been successful in dealing with my circumstances. In spells of weakness, I turned to substance abuse to help numb the pain. Think about that—an already damaged brain under the influence of illicit poisonous chemicals, in tandem with goodly doses of prescription medication. Let me tell you, that scared people. I mean, I spooked a lot of people with that. It's hard to pull out of a downward spiral. Thank god I was able to get my act together again. Once again, it was the music. To everyone who helped me through that, you have my eternal thanks and appreciation. I'm still clinging to the light. Never give up on me.
I'm no saint. I'm not perfect. Lord knows, I've made my share of mistakes in life—and some of them have been real doozies. I'm not proud of them. But you have to admit to them, learn from them, and move on. There's no hiding from your mistakes; and there's no magical solution to coping. You have to want it; and you have to be willing to fight for it. You have to welcome the genuine people who want to help you. Remember the alternative. Remember the reason for this little essay.
So when the darkness comes, keep an eye on the light—whatever that is for you—no matter how far away it seems. Think of me, and people like me, with similar handicaps, and know that we understand and that we're telling you it's okay to move forward, even if you're frightened. Things will get better. Look at Christopher Reeve for a shining example of how to face adversity, real adversity, with courage and dignity. Fate is not selective. It doesn't ignore the rich and famous. Just ask Stephen King. The same tragedies can befall anyone, no matter who you are or where you come from—but the road home is a common highway. We can all share it. Write that down, and remember it.
That's rock-n-roll, baby. Let's keep on playing. To my partner of 45 years, I say, No hard feelings, buddy. You knew who I was from day one. To all of our fans out there, you're a big part of the light at the end of my tunnel. Thanks for being there. I wouldn't be here without you. And like I said at the end of Second Wave: be cool, take care, and I love you.
JAN BERRY
April 2003
It was time I changed my tagline/sigline anyway.
Oh, I don't know. An overpowered Dart with a hemi would be make kind of an impressive sleeper, though the handling might be a little squirrely.
A nice, dignified ride, like a little old lady might be expected to be running. Sure wish she'd pull over and get out of my lane....or floorboard it! Hit it, Granny!
From www.brianwilson-fans.com/:
JAN BERRY — April 3, 1941 — March 26, 2004.
We are deeply saddened to announce that Jan Berry, a pioneer of the West Coast Sound, and the creative force behind the legendary Jan & Dean, passed away this evening. Please say a prayer for Jan, and keep his family in your thoughts during this difficult time. Jan Berry was highly respected by the fans of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys and we will miss him dearly.
LIBERTY 55792 - YOU REALLY KNOW HOW TO HURT A GUY / IT'S AS EASY AS 1, 2, 3 - JAN & DEAN - 4/1965
This record was released with at least three different pressings.
A.) one pressing has nothing but matrix numbers in the wax, identified by A-side being "You really know" on one line and "how to hurt a Guy" on the next line. Also B-side title is all listed in one line. Regular and audition copies.
B.) Another pressing has matrix and delta numbers plus "JANO & JILLY" on A-side, identified by A-side title being in bold dark print with "You really" on first line and "know how to" on second line and "hurt a Guy" on third line. Also, B-side title has "It's as easy" on first line and "as 1, 2, 3" on second line. Both lines in bold dark print. Audition record only
C.) still another pressing has matrix and delta numbers plus "DEAN & JACKIE" on A-side. Same title arrangements as B.). Regular stock copy only. Jackie was Jackie Miller, Dean's girlfriend at the time.
It doesn't like mp3s? That's odd. I sometimes have trouble wirt .ra files, but can generally work around the problem.
Let me see what else I can come up with.
His own description, from the post at #107.
Nine days after my twenty-fifth birthday I smashed my Corvette into a parked gardener's truck on a residential street in Beverly Hills. A gardener's truck—can you believe that? The old steering wheel sandwich, with a windshield wrap, and fiberglass on the side. And yes, I was speeding. Why? Ask people who knew me, and they'll offer some wisecrack about my hell-for-leather driving. Why? Because that's who I was, and let's face it, god hadn't yet declared that my show (my life) was being canceled. What else can I say?
There's a little more to it than just that, though. At the time of the crash, Jan had a plaster cast on his hand after being injured after falling from a train during the shooting of a movie called "Easy Come, Easy Go", in which he was about to play the leading role with Dean Torrence. Due to the accident, the film was cancelled. For Mel Brooks, who also should have starred in the movie, this would have been his on-screen debut. On the casting list was also British comedy star Terry-Thomas.
After the crash, when the production of the film was halted the name was hung on a forgettable Elvis Presley flick. It tanked.
Keep watching this post. I'm going to keep adding a post a day until Jan's birthday on April 3, at least.
(LAUNCH, 03/29/2004 4:00 PM)
By LAUNCH Radio Networks
On Saturday (March 27), the world was shocked to hear that Jan Berry, one half of the popular 1960s surf duo Jan & Dean, had died from a brain seizure, according to Berry's wife. Berry was just one week shy of turning 63. Gertie Berry reported that Jan had a seizure and stopped breathing Friday at their home in Brentwood, California. Berry, who had been in poor health recently from the lingering effects of the brain damage he sustained in a terrible car accident in 1966, was pronounced dead on Friday night (March 26).
Jan Berry and his partner, Dean Torrence, formed a group called the Barons while attending high school in Los Angeles. They practiced their unique harmonies by singing in the shower room after football practice. Bruce Johnston, who would later go on to become a Beach Boy, helped the two by recording them on a two-track tape recorder in Berry's garage, which he had turned into an amateur recording studio. Along with another member, Arnie Ginsburg, they recorded the song "Jennie Lee" in Berry's garage. Shortly after, Dean Torrence left for a six-month hitch in the army, at which point Berry signed with Doris Day's record company, Arwin. The label released the song "Jennie Lee"--about a burlesque dancer--and another called "Gas Money," under the name Jan & Arnie, because Dean was unavailable to sign the recording contract. "Jennie Lee" reached Number Eight in the charts in 1958.
When Dean returned from the army, Arnie left for a hitch in the navy. At that point the legendary duo of Jan & Dean was born and they signed with Herb Alpert's record label, Dore. Their first release, "Baby Talk," reached Number 10 in 1959. Despite their growing success in the music industry, the two continued with their education--Jan Berry, who reportedly had a genius I.Q., studied medicine, while Dean Torrence studied design.
By 1961, they changed record labels again to Challenge Records, and began singing about their passion--surfing. After a show with the Beach Boys, Brian Wilson played them a demo of his song "Surf City." Jan Berry co-wrote the lyrics of the song with Wilson, and with Wilson's help, Jan & Dean recorded that song, which quickly went to Number One in the charts and began a string of hits for the duo, mostly about surfing and hot-rodding, including a pair of 1964 classics, "Dead Man's Curve" and "The Little Old Lady (From Pasadena.)"
Jan & Dean were on a roll, with chart hits and 10 Gold records, before it all came to a tragic end. In 1966, while the two were filming the movie Easy Come Easy Go, Berry was speeding in his Corvette and hit a parked truck. The catastrophic accident caused severe brain damage that left him partially paralyzed and unable to talk. His recovery was agonizingly slow, but eventually he was able to resume singing and writing songs, and the duo made a brief comeback in 1978.
Berry is survived by his wife, Gertie, his parents, three brothers and three sisters.
At Jan & Dean's official web site, jananddean-janberry.com, there is a long posting by Jan Berry in response to a question posed to him in August of 2003 by CNN's Larry King. The question was, "How do you wish to be remembered?" Jan Berry, who was working with an autobiographer at the time, gave an extended answer, with the help of his ghost-writer.
Surf-music star Jan Berry dies
Saturday, March 27, 2004 Posted: 6:32 PM EST (2332 GMT)
Jan Berry, left, and Dean Torrence, right, at the Great Wall of China in a 1986 photo.
Jan Berry, left, and Dean Torrence, right, at the Great Wall of China in a 1986 photo.
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Jan Berry, a member of the duo Jan & Dean that had the 1960s surf-music hits "Deadman's Curve" and "Little Old Lady from Pasadena," has died. He was 62.
Berry had a seizure and stopped breathing Friday at his home. He was pronounced dead that evening at a hospital, said his wife, Gertie Berry.
He had been in poor health recently from the lingering effects of brain damage from a 1966 car crash.
Jan & Dean had a string of hits and 10 gold records in the 1960s with their tales of Southern California. Among them were 1964's "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena," about a hotrod racing grandma, and "Surf City," with its lines about taking the station wagon to a place where there are "two girls for every boy."
With Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, William Jan Berry co-wrote the lyrics for "Surf City" and "Deadman's Curve," which featured the driving guitar licks and falsetto crooning of the wildly popular surf music.
Berry's hit-making career with high school friend Dean Torrence was cut short in 1966 when Berry's speeding Corvette hit a parked truck and he suffered severe brain damage that left him partially paralyzed and unable to talk.
His recovery was slow, but eventually he was able to resume singing and writing songs.
In addition to his wife, Berry is survived by his parents, William and Clara Berry of Camarillo; three brothers and three sisters.
Pulled the tri-power and put on two Carter AFBs on an Offy manifold, didn't like it and got a cast iron Bonneville manifold and ran one AFB on the street.
Couldn't keep a clutch in it until I was turned onto an old guy who lived in Burbank on Valley street and built Long and Borg&Beck clutches in his garage out behind his house; my wife liked to kill me the first time she tried to drive it after I put the 3800# plate in it.
Fell on hard times a year later and the hardhearted softpaper boys came all the way to Monterey from Downey to repo it.
Durn, and all I was running back then was an old '48 Willys Jeepster.
But it had a '59 Cadillac 390-cubic-inch V8 under the hood, one of the 345 horse Kettering Eldorado versions with three two-barrel Rochester dual barrel carbs meant to pull 5000 pounds of big Cadillac, quite an improvement over the original 75-HP Jeep engine.
The salt/sand mix used on the roads of southern Illinois and Indiana in the wintertime had cancered out the sides and floorpan of my dad's Caddy convertable, which I stripped the engine [and wire wheels] from. He changed jobs and moved to Chicago, living above a Jag dealership there, and was driving an E-type the last time I saw him. 
Will this do instead, m'lord?
[We can always pull the back seat, and replace it with a haybale if needed- old Willys woody trick from my early '60s days.]
You get that record player of yours fixed yet?
Let me know once you do.
Ohmigosh. My daughter and I drove through this when we were sightseeing during our trip to LA about two months ago.
Exactly where Los Angeles' version of "dead man's curve" can be found is the subject of some debate, but by general consensus it's a tight corner of Sunset Boulevard near the Bel-Air Estates north of UCLA's Drake Stadium. (In this map of the UCLA campus, it's the curve of Sunset just above Drake Stadium, which is identified with a yellow number 78.) This turn is particularly tricky for persons driving eastbound (left to right on the map above) on Sunset, as a long downhill stretch on which it's all too easy to spurt well over the 35 MPH speed limit leads up to the curve, where a driver suddenly finds he must bank sharply left or centrifugal force will send his car crashing through a wall of trees bordering the UCLA campus. Motorists unfamiliar with this part of Sunset Blvd. (or those who know about it but opt to tempt fate and test their driving abilities by approaching the turn without slowing down) can easily find themselves yanking the steering wheel too hard to the left and spinning off the road or into oncoming traffic.
Nah, I even beat that one. My first reengine job was a '38 Packard that got a flathead Ford V8 mill. The Pack came with a 245 6-banger that had a loose rod, and the Flattie Ford engine was a freebie from a neighbor who'd rebuilt it as his high school 4H project.
The one in the pic here is black; mine was literally fire engine red, repainted for free for me after I'd prepped and primed it myself when the local volunteer fire department had one of their trucks repainted. After they shot theirs, they did one of the guys' pickups, my old Packard and an Indian motorbike, all in the same cherry-red fire truck paint, exactly the exact shade of red of a Texaco gas station emblem, coincidentaly the company for which my dad was a draftsman and engineer responsible for checking specifications of the paint used for company signs and gas station trim.
Around the same time there was a local MG TD running around with a Ford 60 flattie dropped into it, about as neat a setup as I could imagine until I later saw one of the Sunbeam Alpine/Tigers with the 289 V8 out of a Ford Mustang dropped in, offered that way by the factory. No fun to change spark plugs on those ill-handling beasts. At the time I wanted a Morgan or MG TC or YT, shopped around for a bugeye Sprite, and wound up in the deal on a new Midget instead.
The richest guy at out school had a 64 midnight blue Impala, with a record player where the glove compartment was. Very cool and very musch suseptible to bumps.
We had a girl in our graduating class of '65 who was the niece of the local Chevy dealer, and daddy bought her a new '65 'Vette instead of the traditional T-bird, keeping it in the family, and no doubt getting a healthy discount. Corvettes were no strangers to us but the hardtop Stingrats were a newer breed, and she collected a fair gathering of gearheads and bikers while showing off her metallic blue baby, which we found out had been ordered with an automatic tranny, breaking several hearts. Eventually someone asked the eventual tacky *how much* question, and daddy or uncle had thoughtfully left the sticker for her to consider, though of course that didn't quite tell the whole story. Over $5,000 bucks, we were told.
The auto tranny was bad enough; that just floored a couple of the guys; as they pointed out, you could buy a pretty decent two-bedroom house for that, or as I observed, two Corvair Corsas or Spyders or Ford Mustangs.
Or an awful lot of classy old iron....I still know where a '52 Chrusler with a FirePower in it from back in those days now sits....
Berry, Half of Surf Duo Jan& Dean, Dies
By ROBERT JABLON
Associated Press Writer
Love says Jan and Dean and the Beach Boys were both friends and competitors. (Audio)
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Jan Berry, a member of the duo Jan & Dean that had the 1960s surf-music hits "Deadman's Curve" and "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena," has died. He was 62. Berry had a seizure and stopped breathing Friday at his home. He was pronounced dead that evening at a hospital, said his wife, Gertie Berry.
He had been in poor health recently from the lingering effects of brain damage from a 1966 car crash.
Jan & Dean had a string of hits and 10 gold records in the 1960s with their tales of Southern California. Among them were 1964's "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena," about a hotrod racing grandma, and "Surf City," with its lines about taking the station wagon to a place where there are "two girls for every boy."
With Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, William Jan Berry co-wrote the lyrics for "Surf City" and "Deadman's Curve," which featured the driving guitar licks and falsetto crooning of the wildly popular surf music.
Berry's hit-making career with high school friend Dean Torrence was cut short in 1966 when Berry's speeding Corvette hit a parked truck and he suffered severe brain damage that left him partially paralyzed and unable to talk.
His recovery was slow, but eventually he was able to resume singing and writing songs.
In addition to his wife, Berry is survived by his parents, William and Clara Berry of Camarillo; three brothers and three sisters.
Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
He finally relented and I put a new fuel line on it, a Stewart Warner electric pump at the tank and a new heavy-duty engine mounted pump.
Then I pulled the pan, checked all of the clearances, shimmed two bearings, put in an 80PSI high-volume oil pump and closed it up.
Next I put on my racing AFB, installed a set of aircraft Nylon locking nuts on the valve adjusting screws and set the valves at zero-lash.
Then I pulled the distributor, changed the advance curve to get 38 degrees total advance at 1600RPM and installed a set of Mallory points and a HD condensor with a new cap and rotor.
I timed it at 12 degrees at 600 RPM in Drive.
My big trick was to put in a 56 Hydro with a blocked valve body and set the governor pressure to 250PSI; never could get a crisp 3-4 shift but that was asking to much out of that design.
Then I fabricated a snubber for the rear-axle pinion cover to stop wrapup and fabricated a spring-loaded right rear spring traction plate that I could adjust on site to equalize tire spin.
Finally I had a set of three-tube headers built with a 33" collector and a 3-bolt muffler flange so I could run quiet on the street.
My first full-throttle shift 1-2 at 6800RPM resulted in a blossomed generator pulley so up to the Chevy dealer I went for a Corvette large diameter pulley and now I'm ready to kick-ass.
MY best run at Fremont was 13.97 at 101MPH but nobody would run in my class after the first three weeks so I was bracket racing until my wife put her foot down and the car is now history.
But boy, was it ever fun, and that 347 was only.060 over on bore.
I took it to the truck scales with 5 gallons of gas ready to run and it weighed 4800#.
Never did use 4th gear racing and usually drove 70 on the highway, brakes were almost worthless even with all new cylinders, drums, shoes and careful adjustment.
And, yes, my GP tach was right where yours was, but my 3" Sun was on the column.
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