NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

When it comes to going down rabbit holes, Alice in Wonderland has nothing on Philip in Dragsterland, and today’s column is a good example of that.

In addition to being a huge fan of drag racing history (obviously), I also devour rock and roll biographies at an alarming rate, especially while flying. I find some corollaries between the two forms of expression (besides just making beautiful noise), primarily the work it takes to get to the top — in racing, it’s working your way through the classes and leveling up on equipment, and in music, sometimes it’s years of playing bars with second-hand guitars before you hit the big time — and, second, there's the whole band of brothers vibe that a team of mechanics or musicians become that is forged in the fire of the road and the performance.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, I was late-night surfing Amazon TV when I came across Sound of the Surf, a 2022 documentary chronicling the birth and growth of surfing music in California in the early 1960s. Now, we all know that hot rodding and surf music go together like blowers and nitro (Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, Ronnie & the Daytonas, The Rip Chords, et al; see this column I wrote years ago), so I settled in, hoping for maybe a little “four-speed, dual-quad, Positraction 409” action when, in the middle of a montage of great surf album covers, comes this:

My jaw dropped. I immediately recognized the setting of the album cover as fabled Lions Drag Strip and the car as Hayden Proffitt’s Comet A/FXer … but what the heck? Hayden Proffitt presents Jim Head and his Del Rays?

'Tis true, my friends. Believe it or not, Proffitt, a legendary hero of the quarter-mile who began his drag racing career in 1952 at the famed Santa Ana Drags and went on to a successful career in doorslammers, early Funny Cars, and even jet dragsters, launched his own record company and produced this album with Jim Head and the Del Rays.

Who were Jim Head and the Del Rays?

Well, for starters, it's not the self-proclaimed "mad scientist" nitro owner/driver/tuner that we know today. According to a Facebook post by the Inland Empire Musicians Hall of Fame, the Del Rays were formed in the early 1960s by Southern California high school students Jim Head and Charlie Busselle, who had played together in junior high and then recruited Bob McKiernan (guitar alongside Busselle), Dave Neal (sax), and Tom Gronewald (drums). Head originally played drums but switched to bass and vocals. The band, whose members were all students at Pacific High School in San Bernardino, Calif., was named after the Chevrolet Delray.

An opening gig at the YMCA got the attention of a local deejay who got them better bookings, and before they knew it, they were opening for the Beach Boys and later performed with Roy Orbison, Dick Dale and the Deltones, the Ventures, The Righteous Brothers, and the Surfaris, among many others.

By 1965, after creating a repertoire of covers and original songs, they decided to record an album, and, as luck would have it, Head’s uncle was Lloyd Norman, a 15-year veteran of the entertainment business, who was a cousin of Proffitt.

“I have seen and heard many talented individuals, but this man possesses about as many attributes as one man should be allowed,” Norman said of Proffitt. “Hayden Proffitt has tried his hand at a little of everything from rodeo to boat racing to flying. In rodeos, he rode well, fell gracefully, and feared none. Hayden was my student and the only man I have taught to fly that I was certain could solo in less than four hours’ time.”

When Head penned a song called “Comet Cyclone,” inspired by Proffitt’s record-setting 427 Mercury Comet Cyclone ("It beats all the best, it leaves all the rest"), Norman convinced Proffitt to fund the band’s debut album.

The album's cover photo was shot on Aug. 29, 1965, at Lions, where, according to track historian Dave Wallace Jr., Proffitt had just defeated Dickie Harrell's Chevy II in three straight races and made Lions' first nine-second A/FX pass in the process.

On the album’s liner notes, Proffitt wrote, “Here's to the ‘Head’ of the Del-Rays. My hat's off to Jim Head for his last album; may his next Comet Cyclone song be as big a hit as my Comet has been for me. I enjoy a finely tuned group as I do a fine-tuned engine. I first heard Jim Head and the Del-Rays at the San Moritz Club in San Moritz, Calif. Like the Comet, I felt they had a good chance of being winners.”

The 12-track album was recorded at William Locy Sound in Riverside, Calif., with “Comet Cyclone” as the opening track. Other tracks included “Darlena,” which had some local success, and radio station KFXM also used “Del-Ray Rock” for Fontana Raceway commercials. Only about 600 copies of the album were pressed, and the cheapest one I could find for sale online fetched a pretty price of $400.

The Del Rays continued performing at many locations in the Inland Empire and L.A. areas through late 1966 or 1967. They won the Enchanted Forest Battle of The Bands in Lake Arrowhead and played many times in Crestline at the San Moritz Club. For a short time, the Del Rays were the house band for disc jockey Jay Michaels’ local cable Channel 18 TV show and also performed at a number of car shows in Southern California. The band dissolved in 1968, and all but Busselle are still alive; Proffitt passed away in August 2022.

After some dogged determination and a dozen dead-end phone calls, I was able to track down Head, who is very much still alive and living in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, with his wife of 56 years, Judy. The 78-year-old rocker was thrilled to share his story with me.

A lot of teenage rockers got into music because they weren't jocks, which is kind of Head's story, but with a twist.

“I got ran over by a car when I was 12 and couldn’t play sports anymore, so I turned to music,” he told me. “I rented a set of drums and learned how to play, and then started the band.

“We were playing at a YMCA, and we didn’t have a name for the band yet — we only had the band for about a couple of months — and the gal who was going to introduce us asked, ‘What's the name of your band?' And I looked up and saw a Chevy Delrey out the window and said, ‘We’re the Del-Reys.’

“I met Hayden through my uncle Lloyd, and Lloyd came up with the idea of Hayden backing our album, At one point Hayden thought he had a deal worked out with Ford Motor Company where they were going to give out a copy of the album to anyone who bought a Comet, but that never came to fruition, and we only ended up printing 500 or 600 albums.

“There were a lot of surf bands back then, and everyone had their little area where they were famous, but we played a lot of the big places like the Rendezvous Ballroom in Newport and the Pavilion over in Huntington Beach. We played at a lot of the high schools and American Legion halls and all that kind of stuff. We even got to play for the Hells Angels one time. Chuck Clemans from KMEN radio station helped us quite a bit. We were supposed to open for the Rolling Stones in June 1964, but there was a union guy in charge of the Swing Auditorium, and he wouldn't let us perform, so we just sat in the back and got to see the Rolling Stones in person. 

"I met a lot of great guys. I was friendly with Dennis Wilson, who played drums for the Beach Boys — even gave him a few lessons because he liked the way I played — and Jim Messina, who later became half of Loggins and Messina — at the time he was Jim Messina and the Jesters, and they were doing the hot rod stuff, too — he would play with us occasionally, and, of course, Dick Dale.

"We actually surfed, too. Here's me at right along with Tom Gronewald and Bob McKiernan headed to Doheny!"

Head remembers the Lions photo shoot, how he and the band and Proffitt went out next to the track and were introduced to the crowd, many of whom knew about the teen sensations.

“We used to go around a lot of his races with Hayden,” Head remembers. “I was there at Fontana [May 1, 1966] when Hayden was racing Les Ritchey, and Ritchey flipped his Mustang and was killed.

“Hayden was really just a great guy. He wasn't big-headed or whatever. He was just a normal guy who loved cars and loved to race. I read an article about him years ago, and they asked Hayden what his best memorabilia was, and he said, 'My Jim Head and the Del-Rays album,' and there was a photo of him with the album and, well, that's pretty cool."

Head has been a lover of fast cars his whole life, from the 396-powered, four-speed ‘66 Chevelle Malibu Super Sport he drove in high school to late-1950s Nomads, he estimates he has owned 60 different cars. His ‘44 Sedan Delivery was even featured on a centerspread in Rod & Custom magazine.

The late 1960s psychedelic era of music and the pervasiveness of drugs drove Head away from music, and he and his wife built a large Amway business over the years, and he spoke all over the country, sometimes in front of as many as 15,000 people, and a lot of times he’d still jump up on stage and play the drums with whatever band was on hand. Check him out here:

With a keen ear, you can even catch some Del-Rays music in the background of some recent movies and television shows, including the recent HBO series The Flight Attendant, which featured "Darlena."

 Just another great and unknown chapter in the history of our great sport as NHRA celebrates its milestone 75th anniversary. Rock on ...

Phil Burgess can be reached at pburgess@nhra.com

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