Back in the sixties, there was a music genre known as “surf music”. This was typified by the Southern California band the Beach Boys. The Beach Boys then started to mix their surf music with “hot rod music”, or “hot rod rock”. They recorded surf songs such as “Surfin’ USA” and hot rod songs such as “Shut Down”.
Also from Southern California was a duo named Jan & Dean, comprised of Jan Berry and Dean Torrence, who ran in parallel to the Beach Boys, recording surf hits such as “Surf City, and hot rod hits like “Dead Man’s Curve”. In fact, the Beach Boy’s leader, Brian Wilson, shared writing credits on both these two Jan & Dean songs, as well as doing backing vocals on both of them. Jan & Dean went on to record a string of hits.
When I was watching the big C8 reveal event a few months ago, there were some scenes outside the venue prior to the event starting, with the song Dead Man’s Curve playing in the background. This took me back in time to when I was a kid listening to the song. Dead Man’s Curve was, and obviously still is, a classic Corvette song. It tells the story of a guy cruising in his Stingray, only to have a Jaguar XKE (better known in Australia as an “E-Type”), pull up beside him at the lights.
What started as a drag race, turned into a street race, all the way to dead man’s curve. The race started at Sunset & Vine in Hollywood, continuing west along Sunset Boulevard, passing North La Brea Avenue and the well known Schwab’s Drugstore. The race continued on Sunset past Crescent Heights and La Cienega Boulevards, and on past North Doheny Drive.
Just after Whittier Drive, there is a right angle turn which most people believe is the dead man’s curve in the song.
The plan to race all the way to the dead man’s curve was bound to end in tears, because, as the song’s chorus says,
(Dead Man’s Curve) is no place to play
(Dead Man’s Curve) you’d best keep away
(Dead Man’s Curve) I can hear ’em say
“Won’t come back from Dead Man’s Curve”
…. But they raced to dead man’s curve anyway!
Here’s a link to one of the YouTube versions of the song Dead Man’s Curve. There are many versions on YouTube, and this is just one of them. Watch and enjoy one of the iconic songs of the era that helped build the legend of the Corvette.
click to play song >>
DEADMAN'S CURVE - THE MOVIE
But that’s not the end of the story of Dead Man’s Curve. In a tragic twist of fate in 1966, Jan Berry was involved in a near fatal accident in his own Stingray, when he crashed into the back of a parked truck on North Whittier Drive, very close to the dead man’s curve that was depicted in the song. It appears one of the knock-off wheels on his Corvette had worked loose and had come off.
Jan Berry's Totalled Corvette
It took many years for Berry to recover enough from his paralysis and brain injuries to be able to walk and talk again. This effectively ended the career of the duo. Jan did recover enough to tour again with Dean and their concerts proved extremely popular right into the nineties, with the crowd immensely enamoured by Jan’s courage in the face of adversity.
Jan showed he could come back from dead man’s curve.
Jan lived another 38 years after the accident but was plagued by ill health all this time. He died in 2004 of a stroke.
In 1978, the story of Jan & Dean became a tele-movie, naturally named “Deadman’s Curve”. This movie is available to watch on YouTube. I have included the link for this movie, as you may want to watch it some time.
I should warn you the end of the movie is an absolute tear-jerker (but happy tears). But for some of us, the graphic scene of the beautiful C2 convertible going under the back of the truck may elicit even more tears than the movie ending.
