Death Records Now

trying to find info about my father side of the family and all I have to work with is his name.

There isn’t a central site. Birth records are usually kept hidden for privacy’s sake.

RootsWeb has death records for California, Kentucky, Texas & Maine, plus an SSDI:
http://searches.rootsweb.com/

The Brits have
http://www.freebmd.org.uk/

If you can see kangaroos nibbling your roses, or say "Eh" at the end of every third sentence, you are out of luck.

Your birth certificate will tell you your father’s birth state and age at the time. His SSN application will tell you his parents’ names and his exact birth date. You can get it, but
1) It costs $27
2) He has to be dead
3) He had to have had a SSN.

If your mother and he were married and you live near the town they were living in when they married, go to the library and look through the social pages for that week. You may get lucky; if they had an article there, it will be chock full of good stuff; "The groom is the son of . . .", "Best man was his brother . . .", the bride is the daughter of . . ." and so forth. It will be free, too. If they were living in Fresno but ran away to Las Vegas to get married, there still may be a snippet in the Fresno Bee.

The county clerk may let you look at the marriage record for free, if you go into the office and prove you are related. That isn’t on-line, but I thought I’d mention it.