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Take Two

Surfer Girl

Surfer Girl 2.jpg

Little surfer little one
Made my heart come all undone
Do you love me, do you surfer girl
Surfer girl my little surfer girl

I have watched you on the shore
Standing by the ocean's roar
Do you love me do you surfer girl
Surfer girl surfer girl

Brian Wilson's Surfer Girl for the Beach Boys was first released as a single in 1963 (backed by Little Deuce Coupe). It was then released as the on the Beach Boys' third album as the title song that same year. It was the first album that officially credited Brian Wilson with production. Of course, Brian would go on to become a greatly respected song writer and producer and the Beach Boys' 1966 album Pet Sounds is considered to be among  one of the most influential albums. Surfer Girl is a big step away from other surfing  songs by the Beach Boys. Here they are singing it back in 1964:

Our 'takes' this month are of two jazz interpretations of the song by guitarists. Guitarist Bill Frisell recorded Surfer Girl for his 2014 album Guitar In The Space Age - you can listen to it here - there are various videos of him playing it live in concert, but unfortunately I do not think they do justice to the performance.

So our first take is by guitarist Guilherme Fortunato from Portugal. This was from his final student recital at Escola de Jazz Luiz Villas-Boas in June 1922 with Henrique Oliveira José Pedro Jorge (bass) and  João Ventura drums).

Our second 'take' on Surfer Girl is a beautiful version by American guitarist Molly Miller. This video is from 10 years ago; since then, Molly established her Trio with Jennifer Condos and Jay Bellerose in 2016 has been teaching guitar at the University of Southern California where she gained her BM, MM and Doctorate in Musical Arts. Her Trio (with various members) has a number of videos on YouTube (we recently featured them playing The Weight from March this year).

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