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ROCK & ROLL CALL📞📞☎️📞
Dean Torrence with his partner Jan Berry formed the Los Angeles vocal duo JAN & DEAN and helped define the early‑1960s California surf and hot‑rod sound alongside the Beach Boys. Their pop harmonies were sun splashed with cars, bikinis and surf. West Coast fun became a national pop fantasy.
Dean Torrence was born in Los Angeles and met his future partner Jan Berry, at University High School, where they first harmonized after football practice. Berry was already experimenting with home recording, and the two fell in with a group of young musicians that included future Beach Boy Bruce Johnston and drummer Sandy Nelson.
After Dean’s return from the Army Reserve he once again got together with Jan Berry and started working with producers Herb Alpert and Lou Adler, they scored their first hit as Jan & Dean with “Baby Talk,” a Top 10 single in 1959.
After meeting Brian Wilson, Jan and Dean began cutting surf singles. Brian Wilson co‑wrote several of their songs, most famously “Surf City,” which became the first surf‑themed record to hit number one in 1963.
Between 1959 and 1966, Jan & Dean placed 16 singles in the Top 40 , including “The Little Old Lady (From Pasadena),” “Dead Man’s Curve,” “Drag City” and “Ride the Wild Surf.”
We welcome DEAN TORRENCE to our Golden “Endless Summer” on MUSICRADIO this Saturday 3/14/26.
CB.