The Legacy of Miserlou: the many lives of an epic song

This is my favorite video of Dick Dale performing his classic surf song, "Miserlou," in 1995.  He was about 58 years old at the time, rocking as hard as ever.  The reason I decided to do a post about this song is because I stumbled across this video of ukulele players Honoka and Azita playing "Miserlou".  I was skeptical, but these girls shred the ukes, and it has a very different, but still very surflike feel to it on ukuleles.

Most of you older folks, if you're not surfers, remember this song from Quentin Tarantino's breakout 1994 movie, Pulp Fiction.  What most pf you probably don't know is that "Miserlou" actually inspired Quentin Tarantino to make Pulp Fiction.  An instrumental surf song, a 1962 surf rock version of an old, romantic Egyptian song, inspired a young director to make his breakthrough movie, that launched one of the most original directing careers in Hollywood.  That's the power that a great piece of music, or any kind of art, can have.  To the right person, it can inspire other amazing things many years later, and keep inspiring others.

I don't know if any of the initial ideas for the movie came while listening to it, but young Quentin Tarantino, with only Reservoir Dogs under his belt at the time, wanted to make a movie with the same kind of energy that he felt in the song.  Here's Dick Dale, on stage, telling the story of how Tarantino contacted him about using "Miserlou."  Meanwhile, once Quentin got the ideas flowing, a lot more came into play, as you can see in this Charlie Rose interview.

As a Midwest turned Idaho kid, I didn't grow up in a surf culture.  But I moved into one, Huntington Beach, California, in 1987, as a 20-year-old BMX freestyler.  The first version of "Miserlou" I ever heard was this one, by surf punk band Agent Orange.  When I started working at Unreel Productions in late '87, I had to make a copy of the Vision Skateboards video, Skatevisions, one day, and I just dug the music.  After that, I would pop in a copy of the tape just to listen to the soundtrack sometimes while working.  From time to time, I'd be riding somewhere, and someone would have an Agent Orange cassette playing in their ghetto blaster.  So I heard this song form time to time.

Then, in 1994, Tarantino made Pulp Fiction, which put Dick Dale's original version of "Miserlou" back in the mainstream consciousness again.  Like all great pieces of music, it's been covered by all kinds of people.  Here's some of the best versions:

"Pump It" - Black Eyed Peas
"Miserlou" - William Joseph (piano), Caroline Campbell (electric violin), Tina Guo (electric cello)
"Miserlou"- the original Egyptian song
"Miserlou"- Pulp Fiction version with montage from movie
"Miserlou" - The Beach Boys
"Miserlou" - Chubby Checkers, singing in English
"Miserlou" - Old Arabic Version, singing
"Miserlou" - Atonis Simixis, acoustic guitar
"Miserlou"- The ShowHawk Duo, two acoustic guitars
"Miserlou"-  Ara Milikian, violin
"Miserlou"- De Fuego, two guitar, Spanish guitar style
"Miserlou" - Luca Stricagnoli, one man, acoustic guitar, percussion, foot guitars (just watch)
"Miserlou" - Comtemporary orchestra featuring flute and violin
"Miserlou" - Musician unknown, allgirlspace, mandolin
"Miserlou" - The Tarantinos (really, that's the band's name)
"Miserlou" - Adak Group, vocal a capella
"Miserlou" - Near East Brass, horny version
"Miserlou" - Surf Aid Kit, at 4:00, this young surf rock band is showing this epic song to a new generation...

Holy crap... this is one of those posts that took on a life of its own.  That clip embedded above of Dick Dale playing "Miserlou" is one I pull up and listen to every now and then.  It's one of those epic songs I just need to listen to on a regular basis.  But I just found one more version of "Miserlou" that I didn't know existed.  Here's Dick Dale playing the Viper Room in L.A. last June (2018).  He ends with "Miserlou,"  playing it at age 81, 56 years after his version of the song was first released.  It starts about 1:14:30.  Epic.