recruited Glenn Grey (lead guitar), Don Landis (rhythm guitar) and Nick Hefner (saxophone). They played at many high schools and many local dances and clubs. They eventually earned enough money to rent a recording studio, "World Pacific" to start recording. In about three and a half hours, they had an album titled Surfbeat. Saxophonist Nick Hefner played on only one track. Surfbeat was released in January 1963 on Vault Records and quickly went up the charts. Just months earlier, The Beach Boys released a vocal single called "Surfin' Safari". Some months before The Challenger's Surfbeat release, surf music icon Dick Dale's first album Surfers' Choice was released. Surfbeat contained songs that were early influences on surf rock, including songs first recorded by The Fireballs and Duane Eddy. In the early years Rick Griffin contributed cartoons of the band that appeared on their albums and a fan oriented "Challengers Band Cartoon Book". He later became well known for his work creating psychedelic poster art later in the 1960s. The original group released a second album titled Lloyd Thaxton Goes Surfing With The Challengers with the benefit of being associated with the popular teen television show host Lloyd Thaxton. Years of success The Challengers moved on and continued to record albums. During the recording of their third album On The Move, Hefner, Grey, Roberts and Landis all left the band. Richard Delvy and Randy Nauert remained. Art Fisher and Ed Fournier filled two guitar spots and Phil Pruden came in on saxophone. Delvy, Fisher and Fournier also contributed to song compositions for the group. In 1964, they released their hit album K-39. The title track became a big hit and is one of their best known songs. The group continued their successful career, recording several albums a year, shocking by today's "one album every two years" pattern. They also had their own TV show called "Surf's Up!" hosted by Stan Richards in 1965-66 and appeared frequently on another dance show called "Hollywood A Go-Go" hosted by Sam Riddle in 1965–66. Saxophonist Phil Pruden left the group starting with the release of California Kicks in 1966 making The Challengers a four piece guitar driven group for the remainder of their run. During this time the group and surf music popularity overseas in Japan and other countries was exploding. This led to the creation of four more groups with members from The Challengers: The