On this day (July 20) in 1963, Jan and Dean started a two-week run at No. 1 with “Surf City.” Jan Berry co-wrote the song with Brian Wilson. When it topped the chart, it gave Wilson his first No. 1 as a songwriter. Roughly a year later, the Beach Boys would reach the top of the Hot 100 for the first time with “I Get Around.”
Jan and Dean met the Beach Boys when they played a teen hop together in the summer of 1962. Later that year, they played a handful of gigs together with the band backing the duo. Over the next year, Berry and Wilson became friends. Before long, they began writing songs together.
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According to Songfacts, Wilson’s father and the Beach Boys’ manager, Murry Wilson, was furious when the duo took “Surf City” to No. 1. He believed that his son had given away what could have helped boost the band’s career. The groups weren’t deterred by his opinions, though. They continued working together. Brian Wilson appears on the duo’s debut album. Dean Torrence sang lead vocals on the band’s “Barbara Ann.”
Jan and Dean Pioneered the California Surf Sound
While the Beach Boys remain the best-known band of the 1960s surf rock scene, Jan and Dean were the first band to find success with the sound. “Surf City” was the first such song to reach the top of the Hot 100.
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“We came to look at it like we were piloting a boat,” Dean Torrence said of the early days of the duo’s career. “We’d pull all these maneuvers and then slow down and wait for our following to come around. It was strange to think that, at one time, you could go out to Malibu and there’d be nobody out there. Then, on day–whoosh!–[it was] so crowded you couldn’t even get in the water,” he recalled. “In some way, we all were the cause of that whole situation.”
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