- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- The Ventures was among the first to employ and popularize fuzz and flanging guitar effects, concept albums, and twelve-string guitars in rock music.
The Ventures – Walk, Don’t Run (1960): Instrumental rock music is common in the surf world, but there are instrumental rock bands that predate the surf craze. The most popular instrumental rock band of all time is undoubtedly the Ventures. Still, surf rock and rock instrumentals are inextricably linked these days. The website Rate Your Music shows a list of the “Top 50 Surf Rock Instrumentals” as rated by visitors to their site; they include 4 tracks by the Ventures and 7 by the British band the Shadows. Two guitarists from Tacoma, Washington, Bob Bogle and Don Wilson formed a duo in 1958 called the Versatones, later named the Impacts; they began playing dates with a variety of rhythm sections. Since both band names had already been registered, they changed their name to the Ventures. After being rejected by a Liberty Records subsidiary called Dolton Records, the two formed their own label, Blue Horizon Records and released a single, “Cookies and Coke”, with Don Wilson on vocals.
Later they added Nokie Edwards (bass guitar) and Skip Moore (drums) and became an instrumental rock band. The band heard a track called “Walk, Don’t Run” on an album by country guitar virtuoso Chet Atkins called Hi-Fi in Focus (1957) and decided that it would make a great single for the group. The Ventures released “Walk, Don’t Run” on their Blue Horizon label in 1960; it rose to #2 on the charts, behind only “It’s Now or Never” by Elvis Presley. With Howie Johnson as the group’s new drummer, the band put together their excellent first album, also called Walk, Don’t Run, one of three Gold albums released by the Ventures. Besides their hit single, the album includes covers of several instrumental hits and standards: “Raunchy”, “Night Train”, “Caravan”, “Sleep Walk” and “Honky Tonk”. “My Own True Love (Tara’s Theme)” is taken from the soundtrack of Gone with the Wind (1939), still the highest grossing film in history after adjusting for inflation. There are also three tracks that are written by bandmembers in the Ventures: “The Switch”, “No Trespassing”, and “The McCoy”. When Mel Taylor joined the Ventures on drums in 1962, Nokie Edwards became the lead guitarist, with Bob Bogle moving to bass guitar. John Bush in Allmusic notes: “The Ventures put their indelible stamp on each style of ’60s music they covered, and they covered many – twist, country, pop, spy music, psychedelic, swamp, garage, TV themes.” The Ventures hit again in 1969 with the well-known theme “Hawaii Five-O” for the television show Hawaii Five-O. Allmusic lists an astounding 39 Ventures albums that were released between their albums Walk, Don’t Run and Hawaii Five-O. Although the Ventures dropped off the U.S. charts after “Hawaii Five-O”, they retain their popularity elsewhere, particularly in Japan where they are touring to this day. In all, 17 of the Ventures’ albums made the Top 40, with total sales of more than 100 million. From Wikipedia: “The Ventures have had an enduring impact on the development of music worldwide. The band was among the first to employ and popularize fuzz and flanging guitar effects, concept albums, and twelve-string guitars in rock music. Their instrumental virtuosity, innovation, and unique sound influenced many musicians and bands, earning the group the moniker ‘The Band that Launched a Thousand Bands’.” “Walk, Don’t Run” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame; and in 2008, the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.