These days, Walkman-style tape recorders are everywhere.

Jim Pike wishes he had one back in the '60s when a group of young boys would sing with his group, the Lettermen, in the parking lot outside their recording studio.

Those boys grew up to be the Beach Boys.

"They were little kids and they'd hang out in the parking lot," said Pike, one of the founding members of the Lettermen. "We'd finish a Capitol Records session and we'd walk out to go to the parking lot to get in our cars, and there'd be these young kids. They wanted our autographs. They knew Four Freshmen songs. They knew 'It's a Blue World,' and we knew 'It's a Blue World.' We used to sing with them, us and the Beach Boys, just a cappella, out in the parking lot.

"I would have given anything if we had a recording of that. What that would be worth today."

After the Beach Boys signed with Capitol, "we were still singing with them in the parking lot," Pike said.

As peers, after the Beach Boys had started their string of hits, Pike said he noted to Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys' songwriter, they had never recorded a ballad, which was the Lettermen's specialty.

"I said, 'Brian, why don't you write us a surfing ballad?' His face lit up. He thought that's a great idea. He had my phone number and I had his, and I was waiting for him to give me a ballad song. I never heard from him, and then, one day, I'm listening to the radio and I hear 'Little surfer, little one.' I'm going, 'That dirty bugger.' He wrote it, but it was so good that he kept it. He never called me. But that's what gave him the idea to do 'Surfer Girl.' ''