RIP -Don Wilson of The Ventures

Started by admin, January 22, 2022, 07:07:47 PM

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2005-2013 -I performed as lead guitarist in a local popular
"The Ventures" tribute band called "The Dentures"

I talked to Don Wilson at various NAMM shows past 20 years. His passion for the electric guitar was contagious, and his music will influence generations to come.

https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article257626963.html
Don Wilson, co-founder of Tacoma-born Hall of Fame rockers The Ventures, dies at age 88. BY NEWS TRIBUNE STAFF UPDATED JANUARY 22, 2022 6:25 PM

Tacoma's original rock and roller has died, but the music lives on. Don Wilson, co-founder and rhythm guitarist of The Ventures, died of natural causes Saturday in Tacoma at age 88, surrounded by his four children, according to a statement from his son Tim. "Our dad was an amazing rhythm guitar player who touched people all over world with his band, The Ventures," said Tim Wilson. "He will have his place in history forever and was much loved and appreciated. He will be missed."  With an estimated 100 million record sales, the Ventures set the standard for instrumental guitar rock in the 1960s and 1970s. Their hits included the instantly recognizable escalating riff of "Walk, Don't Run," and the equally familiar theme song for "Hawaii Five-O." Those and other songs propelled their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008. Some rock historians and critics felt the honor was long overdue. Ventures founders Bob Bogle and Wilson were bricklayers when they bought guitars and chord books at a pawnshop on Tacoma's Pacific Avenue in 1958. "They were just really cheap guitars," Wilson recalled. "They didn't stay in tune very well. But we wanted to learn." By the next year, they had formed the Ventures, adding Nokie Edwards on bass guitar and Howie Johnson on drums. Wilson recalled the first time he and Bogle met Edwards. "Gosh, we thought, he's really good," Wilson said. "And we asked him when we went into the studio to cut 'Walk Don't Run' if he'd play the bass." Johnson broke his neck in a car wreck in 1961 and died in 1988. Skip Moore played drums on "Walk Don't Run," and Mel Taylor took take over on drums and rounded out the classic lineup, with Edwards on lead guitar, in 1962. The band scored the No. 2 hit in the country with "Walk, Don't Run" in 1960.
On April 26, 1960, the members of the Tacoma based rock group "The Ventures" modeled their clean cut rock look with matching blazers, ties and khakis for the photographers at Richards Studio in Tacoma. The fresh faced young musicians, (l to r) Nole F. (Nokie) Edwards, Bob Bogle, Howie Johnson and Don Wilson, posed with their shiny new Fender guitars for one of their earliest photo shoots. RICHARDS STUDIO COLLECTION
Wilson said the Ventures were one of the first hitmakers to have a four-piece band. "Every other musician around said, 'You're not going to go in the studio without a keyboard or a saxophone?' I said, 'Well, we wouldn't if I knew one,' " Wilson recalled.  The Ventures' inexperience was part of the bands' distinctive sound, Wilson said. "(At the time) I never heard of Dick Dale," he said, referencing another leader in the surf genre of the late 1950s and early 1960s. "(Bogle) had a sound of his own. I don't know how that developed; it was just a natural thing for him," Wilson said. One of those trademarks is what Wilson calls the "teke-teke-teke" guitar sound. "Bob, when he was playing the bass and Nokie was on lead, he came up with that," Wilson said. Bogle died in 2009, and Edwards passed in 2018, leaving Wilson as the only surviving original member of the band. In the 1960s and early 1970s, 38 of the band's albums charted in the US, ranking them as the 6th-best album chart performer during the 1960s. The band had 14 singles in the Billboard Hot 100. With over 100 million records sold, the Ventures are the best-selling instrumental band of all time. A short essay on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website explains why The Ventures matter: "The band's influence has extended from nascent surf music to the British Invasion, garage rock, psychedelia, heavy metal, new wave, and beyond."  Rock legend John Fogerty formally inducted the band in 2008, underlining the effect of the Ventures on musicians who followed. "The sound of it became surf music, and the audacity of it empowered guitar players everywhere," he said. The band continued to perform through numerous lineup changes, but Wilson was the one constant member throughout, and never missed a tour until his retirement in 2015, according to the family's statement released Saturday. He continued to record with the current lineup of The Ventures, and he, along with his family, produced a documentary film, "The Ventures: Stars on Guitars" (2020). Memorial service information has not yet been announced.

Read more at: https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article257626963.html#storylink=cpy