“Driftin'” was released in 1959 by a British instrumental group known at the time in England as the Drifters. They would later that year change the group’s name from the Drifters to the Shadows — due to the name conflict with the American R&B/doo wop vocal group the Drifters.
The song is a 12-bar blues-derived, riff-based rocker written by lead guitarist Hank Marvin. My version is a fairly literal cover.
“The Lonely Surfer” was a top-40 single and album title track in 1963 for Jack Nitzsche. The Ventures waited until the 1990s to do an arrangement.
You may not have heard of Jack Nitzsche as a leader, but he had an enormous career in popular music.
He was a major contributor to Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound”, working as an arranger on some of Spector’s greatest productions. He played keyboards on numerous mid-1960s sessions by the Rolling Stones, and did choral arrangements for that group’s “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”
He was involved with Neil Young recordings as producer, arranger, and keyboardist. He co-wrote the classic “Needles and Pins.” He arranged and produced for everyone from Tim Buckley, Lou Christie, the Walker Brothers, and Marianne Faithfull to the Monkees, Lesley Gore, the Neville Brothers, and Graham Parker.
And he was one of the most respected soundtrack composers of the late twentieth century, working on the scores to Performance, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Blue Collar, An Officer and a Gentleman, and The Crossing Guard.
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