[Except] for Dick Dale's, no surf music came out on major labels before the Beach Boys proved it could be more commercial than anyone had dreamed. They did it by blending together—probably not too consciously—elements of all the disparate styles they'd heard in records they liked, and they had the good taste to prefer the kind of records that approached a sort of summation of teenage consciousness. By distilling the essence from these, the Beach Boys emerged as perhaps the ultimate in teenage rock-and-roll groups.

Influenced by various Fours (Freshmen, Preps, Seasons), they added to the standard surf instrumentation a thick vocal sound laden with harmonies, falsetto singing, and constant background vocals. And their voices, rather than aping Little Richard and James Brown (as singers in white bands were wont to do in those days) or the New York doo-woppers, preserved a wholesome, clean-cut, high-school-cocky tone...