(FORTUNE Magazine) – "Stringer" Bobby Fuller, El Paso Rock: Early Recordings, Volume 1 (Norton)

Bobby Fuller released "Stringer" in 1964 in El Paso. A minor local hit then, it sounds fresh today because it's the single great example of what can only be called West Texas surf guitar. You have to cross 1,000 miles of desert to get to the Pacific from El Paso, but that didn't prevent Fuller from hearing the waves. Eventually he went to California, where in 1966 he was found dead at 24 in a Hollywood parking lot--suicide? murder? accident?--the scent of gasoline coming from his clothes. --Gregory Curtis