Dick Dale Biography

In Meredith Willson's classic musical "Music Man," a smooth talking salesman comes to a small town and charms all the parents into purchasing musical instruments for their children, no matter how talented they are. When Dick Dale was in the seventh grade in his hometown of Algona, Iowa, that's exactly what happened. A real life "music man" came to town and just as in the musical charmed all the parents into purchasing musical instruments. Dick asked for a flute. "But," he said whimsically, "they were all out of flutes so I had to settle for a tenor sax." After that the story changes. Dick was so talented he was soon playing in the school band and before long won a school championship. "I won it for the baritone sax," he explains with his trademark dry wit. "They switched me from tenor because I was the only kid in class with hands big enough to hold a baritone sax." Thus are life's career moves made!

Neither of his parents was musically inclined. Dick says "I don't know where it came from. I just loved to sing and play."

Dick was 16 when he graduated from high school. It was the middle of World War II and the future was very uncertain for him, as it was for all young men at that time. One night he and his friend went to hear a "territory" band, Lynn Kerns and his Rhythm Club. Almost as a gag Dick approached Mr. Kerns and asked if he needed a sax player. "Yes," was the surprising answer, "my sax player is going in the army tomorrow.

"I rushed home and told my Mom I was leaving with a band," recalls Dick, "and she said, h no you're not!" She finally agreed and Dick spent the next four months on the road in a grueling series of one-night stands. "After four months of no sleep and non-stop travel I decided to go home.

Algona, which is just 60 miles from Meredith Willson's famous Mason City, Iowa, is deep in corn country and for a while Dick worked at shucking corn or digging postholes with a car axle. A few weeks of that and the orchestra began to look pretty good! He rejoined the Kerns band and stayed until his 18th birthday when he enlisted in the Navy. By the time he got out, the war was over and Dick had made a decision. Music would be his life's work.

In addition to playing sax he also loved to sing, the famed Billy Eckstine was his role model and he began doing both in several territory bands. At this time he met the beautiful young lady who would share his life, Marguerite Gappa. She recalls that she and Dick met through mutual friends at a dance. "I knew he was a musician," she says, "and most musicians are not very good dancers. But he was terrific and we kind of liked each other right away." Marguerite was working in Mankato, Minnesota, but soon moved to Chicago. Dick decided that was too far away and went after her. Marguerite laughed, "He chased me till I caught him." They were married in 1949. They have one daughter and three sons.

He was in the Amby Myers band in 1950, when the Lawrence Welk orchestra appeared in nearby Storm Lake, Iowa. Dick drove over and Orie Amodeo, who played flute in the Welk band, introduced him to Lawrence. Before the evening was over Dick sang with the band and Lawrence promised to call if there was an opening. In February of 1951 he called and asked Dick to come to Clinton, Iowa where he offered him a job. After talking it over with Marguerite, he accepted.

The band left for a tour of the West Coast. By May they had arrived in Los Angeles and on May 2nd they made their momentous debut on KTLA. The fabulous saga of the Welk band had begun and Dick was there from the beginning.

He sang, danced, did comedy sketches and became part of the production staff as well as playing reed instruments. He was, in Lawrence's words "one of the most talented and versatile performers we ever had. We can ask Dick to do almost anything." Including says Dick wryly, "playing Santa Claus in a hot red suit every Christmas." Dick's self-deprecating and hilarious sense of humor endeared him to the whole cast. Spending time with him and listening to some of his reminiscences of life in the band are guaranteed to bring tears of laughter to your eyes.