”I never said I was a guitar player,” the outspoken Dick Dale said last week by phone.

Maybe he never has – but a lot of other people have.

Dale, performing Thursday in Bend (see ”If You Go”), is widely known as the father of the California surf-guitar sound of the early ’60s. Along with ”father,” Dale’s name is often preceded by descriptors including, but not limited to, ”god,” ”master,” ”king” and even ”shaman.”

But the ever-busy Dale, 69, is a lot more than a guitar player.

Like what?

Like this: A renaissance man who pilots twin-engine planes and glides gliders. He’s a maverick sort who for decades bred dozens of exotic pets, including lionesses, tigers, elephants, snakes.

He gave up the beasts only after the birth of his son, Jimmy, now 14.

”I had about 40, 50 species all at once, for about 30 years. Then when my son was born, he started playing with the baby tigers. He’d come in and show me his claw marks, so I had to give it all up. They were gonna eat him,” he adds, jokingly. (We think he’s joking.)

Dale, originally from Boston, still carries a matter-of-fact, tough-sounding tone that bespeaks his Northeastern roots.

In the ’60s, Dale battled and beat rectal cancer. He has campaigned on behalf of the environment, and lately he has done work on behalf of children through the Special Olympics and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Among Dale’s varied interests: The martial arts.

Any specific type?

”Just about everything,” he said. ”You name it. It’s all basically the same thing. You study different styles of masters throughout the world and then you put together what you like, and you use what fits you.”

He’s trained his son in the martial arts. But earning a black belt is not the goal.

”Oh, I tell Jimmy, ‘Belts just hold up your pants.’ Belts mean nothing. I’ve been in it (martial arts) since my teens … and it’s been my life all my life.”

And, unlike The Beach Boys, the biggest darlings at the peak of surf-era music, Dale didn’t just pose behind a longboard: He actually paddled out in the lineup and caught some waves.

Dale has long maintained that the primal, muscular and instantly recognizable guitar sound heard in tunes like ”Misirlou” and ”The Wedge” was borne of the water, inspired by the shoreline thunder, spit and hiss of breaking waves.

Primarily known as an instrumentalist, Dale has a tuneful singing voice when he chooses to use it. Most of all, and we’re happy to say it for him, he’s a guitar player.

This fall, Sundazed will begin to reissue Dale’s entire catalog, starting with 1962’s ”Surfers’ Choice” LP. The rest of the albums will follow in 2007, according to the label’s Web site, www.sundazed.com.

”What I do is, I play to the people,” Dale told The Bulletin. ”I play to the grass-roots people … They can feel what I do. My rhythms are exactly the way they came from the tribal people and the temples, where you go ‘1234, 1234, 1234, 1234,’ when you go, ‘tika-taka-tika-taka-tika-taka-ta,” and then you go, ‘takatakatakatakatakatakateh.’”

He recalled the time a member of The Cure, after seeing Dale perform live, told him, ”’You know, Mr. Dale, I’d heard of you, but never seen you in person. … This was the first time in my life where I ever heard speed and I could hear every note.’ He wasn’t hearing every note. What he was hearing was pulsation.”

To tell you the truth, Dale lost us back at ”grass-roots people.” But we followed him once again when he added that his guitar sound reflects the fact that drums were his first instrument.

Son Jimmy, a rock ‘n’ roll prodigy who seemingly could take over the family business at any time, often joins his father on stage. Photos at www.dickdale .com show a young Jimmy Dale manning the drum kit as far back as 1997, when he was all of 5. The cymbals dwarf his little head. He’s equally adept on the guitar.

”He matches me note for note,” Dale said. ”They flew him back to play with Les Paul already … He’s played in front of 50,000 people with me.”

Crowds ”just freak out” when they see a little kid up there, said Dale.

Dale experienced a professional revival thanks to the resurgent popularity of surf music in the 1990s. Perhaps most memorably, Quentin Tarantino’s ”Pulp Fiction” made great use in the opening scene of Dale’s ”Misirlou.”

Said Dale, ”Whenever (Tarantino) comes around town, he says, ‘Get Dick Dale!’” Add another to the list of Dale’s talents: He does a pretty fair impression of Tarantino’s rapid speech.

”I’m the one who let him use ‘Misirlou’ to create the movie,” Dale said. ”The funny part about it was, when he was trying to contact me, he wrote a note saying he wanted to talk to me and gave it to my bass player. My bass player didn’t know who he was and threw the note away.

”Of course, he found me in my dressing room, and he says, ‘Listen, I’ve been listening to you for a long time, and your music is so powerful. It’s like ‘The Good, Bad and The Ugly’ all wrapped up into one.’ And he goes, ‘Your trumpet is very heraldic, like ”Ben-Hur.” Your songs are masterpieces. Can I have your permission to take your song and just play it over and over and over and over in my brain? I want to get the energy from it and create a masterpiece of a movie to complement the masterpiece of your song.’”

”I said, ‘Go for it.’”

”Do you think Tarantino pulled it off?” we asked.

Dale snorted and said, ”What do you think?”

Gulp. Suddenly, we think we feel like one of the cowering customers in that diner scene from the movie.

”I’m a man who manipulates instruments,” Dale said. ”And I make them scream with pain or pleasure. That’s what I learned to do. It’s Dick Dale music. That’s what it’s all about.”

If You Go

What: Dick Dale

When: 8 p.m. Thursday, doors open 7:30 p.m.

Where: Domino Room, 51 N.W. Greenwood Ave., Bend

Cost: $15 in advance at Ranch Records (389-6116) and TicketsWest (800-992-8499), $20 at the door; 21 and over only

Contact: 388-1106