1957–1959: formation Berry and Torrence met while both were students at
Emerson Junior High School in
Westwood, Los Angeles, and both were on the school's
football team. By 1957, they were students in the class of 1958 at the nearby
University High School, where again they were both 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, including future actor
James Brolin.
The Barons In order to enter a talent competition at University High School, Berry and Torrence helped form a
doo-wop group known as "The Barons" (named after their high school's
Hi-Y club, of which they were members), which was composed of fellow University High students William "Chuck" Steele (lead singer), Arnold P. "Arnie" Ginsburg (born November 19, 1939; 1st tenor), Wallace S. "Wally" Yagi (born July 20, 1940; 2nd tenor), John 'Sagi" Seligman (2nd tenor), with Berry singing bass and Torrence providing
falsetto. 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". Following the contest, various members of the Barons drifted away, leaving only Berry and Torrence, 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 Torrence. Berry adapted the
Civil War tune "
Aura Lea" and arranged the harmonies. After weeks of practice, Berry, Ginsburg, and Torrence planned to make a
demo recording in Berry's garage, but Torrence was drafted into the
United States Army Reserve, forcing Berry and Ginsburg to record "Jennie Lee" without Torrence, with Berry's friend and fellow University High student Donald J. Altfeld (born March 18, 1940, in Los Angeles ) "beating out the rhythm on a children's metal high chair". 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 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 No. 3 on the
Cash Box charts on June 21, 1958, No. 4 on the
R&B charts, and No. 8 on the
Billboard charts on June 30, 1958.
Billy Ward and his Dominoes's R&B cover of "Jennie Lee" reached No. 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. Jan & Arnie were a featured act on the Summer Dance Party that toured the US East Coast, including Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Connecticut in July 1958. By the end of the month, they traveled to
Manhattan to appear on
The 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. Arnie Ginsburg recorded a one-off single with a band named the Rituals on the Arwin label. The single, "Girl in Zanzibar" b/w "Guitarro", was released on vinyl in January 1959, preceding Jan and Dean's first single "Baby Talk", released in May 1959. Other than Arnie, the single featured
Richard Podolor on guitar, Sandy Nelson on drums,
Bruce Johnston on piano, Dave Shostac on sax, Harper Cosby on bass, and
Mike Deasy on guitar. It is unclear if the actual single was released for the general public but there are several promotional copies pressed to vinyl in existence. 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, and in December 1973 he was granted a
U.S. patent for a table he designed. Ginsburg moved in 1975 to
Santa Barbara, California, where he worked as an architectural designer. In September 1976, Ginsburg and Michael W. O'Neill were granted a patent for a portable
batting cage.
1959–1962: early records 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 No. 10 hit on the Dore label with "
Baby Talk" (1959) (which was incorrectly labeled as Jan & Arnie when it initially was released), 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. During this time Berry co-wrote or arranged and produced songs for other artists outside of Jan and Dean, including
the Angels ("
I Adore Him", Top 30), the Gents, the Matadors (Sinners), Pixie (unreleased), Jill Gibson,
Shelley Fabares, Deane Hawley,
the Rip Chords ("Three Window Coupe", Top 30), and
Johnny Crawford, among others. Unlike most other rock 'n roll acts of the period, Jan and Dean did not give music their full-time attention. They 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, became a member of
Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, and entered the California College of Medicine (now the
UC Irvine School of Medicine) in 1963.
1963–1966: peak years ''; August 3, 1963 Jan and Dean reached their commercial peak in 1963 and 1964, after they met Brian Wilson. The duo scored 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 (1959-1966). Berry and Wilson collaborated on roughly a dozen hits and album cuts for Jan and Dean, including "Surf City", co-written by Jan Berry and Brian Wilson (number one, 1963). Subsequent top 10 hits included "Drag City" (number 10, 1964), the eerily portentous "Dead Man's Curve" (number 8, 1964), and "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena" number 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. Also in 1964, the duo performed the title track for the
Columbia Pictures film
Ride the Wild Surf, starring
Fabian Forte,
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 due to their association 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 film in
Chatsworth, California, in August 1965. After the surfing craze, Jan and Dean scored two Top-30 hits in 1965: "
You Really Know How to Hurt a Guy" got up to 27 and "
I Found a Girl" got to 30—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. In 1966, Jan Berry recorded "The Universal Coward", an angry response to
Donovan’s anti-war single "
Universal Soldier"(originally written by
Buffy Sainte-Marie) even though Berry never served in the military.
1966–1968: Berry's car wreck On April 12, 1966, Berry received severe head injuries in an automobile accident on Whittier Drive, just a short distance from
Dead Man's Curve in
Beverly Hills, California, two years after
the song had become a hit. He was en route 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. Berry also had separated from his girlfriend of seven years, singer-artist
Jill Gibson, later a member of
the Mamas & the Papas for a short time, who also had co-written several songs with him. He was in a coma for more than two months before finally awakening on the morning of June 16. Berry recovered from
brain damage and partial
paralysis. He had limited use of his right arm, and had to learn to write with his left hand as well as learning to walk 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 group
the Yellow Balloon. 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,
Michael Nesmith,
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" in 1971, for the album
Pollution by Pollution on Prophesy Records. Berry returned to the studio in April 1967, almost one year to the day after his accident. Working with Alan Wolfson, 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.
Later years In 1971, Jan and Dean released the album
Jan & Dean Anthology Album under the label
United Artists Records. The album included many of their top hits, starting with 1958's "Jennie Lee" and ending with 1968's "
Vegetables". Berry began to sing again in the early 1970s, touring with his Aloha band, while Dean began performing with a band called
Papa Doo Run Run. On August 26, 1973, Torrence was scheduled to appear at the
Hollywood Palladium as part of
Jim Pewter's "Surfer's Stomp" reunion. Torrence had recently released some Jan & Dean songs with new vocal parts by
Bruce Johnston (of the Beach Boys) and producer
Terry Melcher under the moniker the Legendary Masked Surfers. Torrence arranged with Berry to join him
lip-syncing on stage to a pre-recorded track. The two anticipated that the audience would know it was a tape recording, and they decided to make light of it during the performance. That night, they joked around and stopped lip-syncing on stage while the music continued, but the audience became angry and started booing. 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 headlining tours followed through 1980. Berry was still suffering the effects of his 1966 accident, with partial paralysis and
aphasia. The duo experienced a resurgence after
Paul Morantz's "Road back from Deadman's Curve" article appeared in
Rolling Stone in 1974, writing the piece after spending extensive time with the two singers, their families, doctors and associates. Morantz first submitted the story to
Playboy, who recommended it to
Rolling Stone. He then wrote a film treatment from his story which was purchased by CBS. On February 3, 1978,
CBS aired a
made-for-TV film 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 film he can be seen sitting in the audience, watching "himself" (Richard Hatch) perform onstage. The part of Jan and Dean's band was played by Papa Doo Run Run, which included Mark Ward and Jim Armstrong, who went on to form Jan and Dean and the Bel-Air Bandits. 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 and 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, and performing with Papa Doo Run Run at Cupertino High School. In the Netherlands the showing on television of the movie by
Veronica in August 1979 earned them a huge hit record of the re-recorded "Surf City" and "Deadman's Curve" songs as a double A-sided single record release, and a
golden oldies record having "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena" as its flip side reached a lower position in the charts. In the early 1980s, Papa Doo Run Run left to explore other performance and recording ventures. Berry struggled to overcome drug
addiction. In 1979, Berry had performed over 100 concerts of Jan and Dean songs with another front man from Hawaii, Randy Ruff. Torrence also toured briefly as "Mike & Dean", with Mike Love of the Beach Boys. Later, the duo reunited for good. In "Phase II" of their career, Torrence led the touring operation. Jan and Dean continued to tour on their own throughout the 1980s, the 1990s, and into the new millennium – with 1960s nostalgia providing them with a ready audience, headlining oldies shows throughout North America.
Sundazed Music reissued Torrence's
Save for a Rainy Day in 1996 in CD and vinyl formats, as well as the collector's vinyl 45 rpm companion EP, "Sounds For A Rainy Day", featuring four instrumental versions of the album's tracks. Between the 1970s and the early 2000s, Torrence issued a number of re-recordings of classic Jan and Dean and Beach Boys hits. A double album titled
One Summer Night / Live was issued by
Rhino Records in 1982. Torrence released the album
Silver Summer with the help of Mike Love in 1985 for Jan & Dean's 25th anniversary.
Silver Summer was officially released as a Jan & Dean album, but falsely gives credit to Berry as co-producer and singer; Berry did not contribute to the album. Torrence 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. June 11, 2002, Torrence released a solo album titled
Anthology: Legendary Masked Surfer Unmasked. 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.
Berry's death Berry died on March 26, 2004, as the result of a seizure at age 62. He was an
organ donor and his body was cremated. On April 18, a "Celebration of Life" was held in Berry's memory at the
Roxy Theatre on the
Sunset Strip in
West Hollywood, California. Attendees included Torrence, Lou Adler,
Jill Gibson, and
Nancy Sinatra, along with many family members, friends, and musicians associated with Jan and Dean and the Beach Boys, including the original members of Papa Doo Run Run. In February 2010, the Jan and Dean album
Carnival of Sound was released on the Rhino Handmade label. The album cover was designed by Torrence. Along with the CD, there was a limited edition (1500 copies), which included a 10-track LP. The album was released in Europe in April 2010 in its original US form. In 2012, Torrence reunited with Bruce Davison, who portrayed him in the 1978 film ''Deadman's Curve
, to perform with the Bamboo Trading Company on their From Kitty Hawk To Surf City
album. The songs were "Shrewd Awakening" and "Tonga Hut", which was featured on the film Return of the Killer Shrews
, a sequel to the 1959 film The Killer Shrews'' and also "Tweet (Don't Talk Anymore)", "Drinkin' In the Sunshine", and "Star Of The Beach". The album also features Dean's two daughters, Jillian and Katie Torrence; the three of them were featured in the music video of "Shrewd Awakening". After Berry's death, Torrence began touring occasionally with the Surf City All-Stars. 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". Torrence's website features—among other things—rare images, a complete Jan and Dean discography, a biography, and a timeline of his career with cohort Jan Berry. He currently resides in Huntington Beach, California, with his wife and two daughters. ==Legacy==