Rock and Roll Hall of Fame beckons Tacoma rock heroes The Ventures

ERNEST A. JASMIN; ernest.jasmin@thenewstribune.com
Last updated: March 10th, 2008 10:53 AM (PDT)

Rock Hall inductee John Fogerty, who cites the group as an influence, will do the honors. John Mellencamp, Leonard Cohen, the Dave Clark Five and Madonna join the Ventures in the Hall’s Class of 2008.

But the question fans and peers are still asking is, What took so long?

With around 100 million estimated record sales, The Ventures – known for “Walk, Don’t Run” and “Hawaii Five-O,” among other hits – are widely considered the most popular instrumental rock combo of all time. The group charted with 38 albums between 1960 and 1972 alone. And that’s before you factor in the Venture- mania that lingers in Japan to this day.

Performers become eligible for induction 25 years after their first record release. So Wilson, Bogle, Nokie Edwards, Gerry McGee and the late Mel Taylor – the Ventures being honored tonight – could have been inducted as far back as in 1985, when fellow honoree Madonna was just warming up.

“It’s strange isn’t it? Who can explain that one?” wondered Larry Parypa, guitarist for another iconic Tacoma rock outfit, the Sonics. “They were so influential. How many young guitar players cut their teeth listening to their music?”

Local outrage over the snub reached critical mass in 2005, the year a local oldies station KBSG-FM (97.3) and Lacey’s Venture Bank organized a Seattle concert and signature drive, hoping to gather enough signatures to get the Rock Hall’s attention. Fellow Tacoma rock legends the Wailers played that show.

“These people who vote on who goes into the museum, a lot of them don’t know the history of the music,” Wailers bassist Buck Ormsby said recently.

“They’re close to 100 million (records sold), and it took them this long to get into the Hall of Fame,” said his bandmate, singer Kent Morrill. “They should have been one of the first inductees.”

So it was understandable that The Ventures themselves were still cynical, even after being nominated in December.

“After 22 years of being overlooked, I’m thinking, ‘Well, we’re nominated. But we’re not gonna get in,’” said Wilson, 75, who lives in Sammamish.

Two weeks later, the band’s manager called with news to the contrary.

“I almost fell off my chair,” Wilson said.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Of course, Wilson and Bogle hadn’t foreseen any of this back in 1958 when they worked construction.

The duo bought guitars and a chord book at a Pacific Avenue pawnshop, hoping only to get good enough to headline local clubs and quit their day jobs.

“Our aspirations were to pick up nothing heavier than a guitar,” Wilson said. “But it just mushroomed into something where we became internationally known.”

By the following year, they had formed The Ventures with bassist Nokie Edwards and drummer Howie Johnson. (Johnson broke his neck in a car wreck in 1961 and died in 1988. Skip Moore would play drums on the band’s first hit single, and Mel Taylor would take over on drums and round out the classic lineup in 1962. Gerry McGee would later replace Edwards in 1968.)

The young Ventures honed their skills at Tacoma area hot spots, including Bob’s Java Jive, Blue Moon and the Brittania.

IT’S A HIT

At some point, Bogle got his hands on a copy of Chet Atkins’ “Hi Fi in Focus” album, which included a Johnny Smith song called “Walk, Don’t Run.”

The Ventures added the song to their set and wound up playing it several times a night because of all the requests. So it seemed like a no-brainer that it would be the second song they recorded. (A previous session had yielded a track called “Cookies and Coke.”)

In 1960, The Ventures released “Walk, Don’t Run” on their own Blue Horizon label, with support from co-producers Josie Wilson (Don Wilson’s mom) and Bob Reisdorf. But getting the song on the radio wasn’t easy.

“We took it to a lot of radio stations around here,” Wilson said. “And one guy said – a disc jockey – ‘That’s pretty run-of-the-mill.’ And at that time, maybe it was.”

Influential KJR-AM disc jockey Pat O’Day was among the first DJs to air the song. Within days, the station’s phones were ringing off the hook.

“That led to us enthusiastically putting the entire song on the air,” O’Day recalled, fondly, “It was a great moment helping those guys out because, Donnie and Bobby, they’re such gentleman. And Josie was such a wonderful lady.”

The song took off, eventually peaking at No. 2 on the pop singles charts. A handful of hits had already come out of the Northwest: the Wailers’ “Tall Cool One,” the Fleetwoods’ “Come Softly to Me” and Ron Holden’s “Love You So.” And along with those, it helped put Northwest rock on the map.

“It made us feel good when our little old Pacific Northwest was able to launch hit records nationally,” O’Day said.

“It gave courage to many that the Northwest could be the springboard to music fame. Without those events, I think people from the Northwest would have thought it’s too steep a hill to climb. You’ve got to be from New York or Nashville or L.A.”

But The Ventures were still far from easy street. “We were pretty much taken for granted in this country,” Wilson said. “I mean, we’re an instrumental group. I still have contracts where we played four hours for $250. And that’s after we had a hit!”

The band would have to head to the Land of the Rising Sun to get their first taste of real stardom.

JAPANESE INVASION

In 1962, the band was booked in Japan, but the promoter could afford only two of them. So Wilson and Bogle took the trip.

“They had a Japanese drummer and a Japanese bass player (using) a stand-up bass,” he said. “Even in 1962, I don’t think there was an electric bass in the country. They were slowin’ the beat down, and were almost turning it around, you know.”

Not wanting to embarrass their ad hoc rhythm section, The Ventures had their interpreter make up an excuse for why they would play as a duo. And perhaps the stripped-down arrangement had something to do with how awed the Japanese crowd was by their guitar-driven sound.

More-established acts Bobby Vee and actress Jo-Ann Campbell topped the bill. “She was the headliner. Nobody ever heard of us,” Wilson said. “We came back two years later, in ’64, and there were 6,000 people at the airport. And I’m thinkin’, ‘Jeez, who’s on the plane?’

“They’re on the roof with flags and all kinds of stuff. The closer we got it said, ‘Welcome, the Ventures.’ And I’m thinkin’, ‘Wow! That’s incredible.’ At that time, we had no idea of our popularity. If I had, I’d have asked for more money. I know that.”

Venturemania was to Japan as Beatlemania would be to the U.S. months later. The Ventures sparked a guitar revolution in that country and even outsold the Fab Four there in their heyday. The band members could scarcely leave their hotel rooms.

“That lasted for a couple of years, and then that kind of settled down. And if we’d go somewhere, we’d have a group of Japanese following us all over the place.”

By the early ’70s, the popularity of The Ventures had waned in the U.S., where the band stopped touring for years at a time. Even now, the band tours Japan every year but rarely plays its home turf.

FUTURE VENTURES

But might the band’s induction and upcoming 50th anniversary mean more U.S. dates?

Wilson mentioned plans to play a showcase that will include other Northwest classic rock bands.

The oldies station, Lacey-based Venture Bank and the Tacoma Rainiers were still hashing out details late last week. The tentative plan was to have the Ventures and other classic acts from the area perform at Cheney Stadium as early as next month, according to Joseph Beaulieu, Venture Bank’s senior VP of marketing.

Venture Bank is also sponsoring a Ventures party tonight at Puyallup’s Liberty Theater, 116 W. Main St. Doors will open at 7 p.m. for a free large-screen viewing of the induction ceremony broadcast from the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City.

The Ventures will also soon publish a band biography that Josie Wilson had been writing before she died last year. The recently amended working title, Wilson said, is “The Hall of Fame Ventures story: Walk Don’t Run, 50 years of Rock n’ Roll.”

The band recently recorded an album with the Wailers, which will include their most-popular numbers and Wilson and Morrill singing a vocal medley. Wilson said it will be out soon. It just needs to be mixed and named.

Wilson said he recently suggested “Wailers Ventures Reunion” to Morrill. “But I don’t think he was that crazy about that,” he added.

Ernest A. Jasmin: 253-274-7389

Ventures trivia

 • Ventures roots can be traced to 1958, when Tacoma construction workers Don Wilson and Bob Bogle bought a couple of guitars and a chord book from a pawnshop on Pacific Avenue.

 • The Ventures being honored by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tonight are Bogle (guitar, bass; born Jan. 16, 1934), Wilson (guitar; born Feb. 10, 1933), Nokie Edwards (guitar, bass; born May 9, 1935), Gerry McGee (guitar; born Nov. 17, 1937) and Mel Taylor (drums; born Sept. 24, 1933, died Aug. 11, 1996).

 • The Ventures were the first band to have a top-10 hit with two versions of the same song: “Walk, Don’t Run” in 1960 and the trippier “Walk, Don’t Run ’64.”

 • The Ventures will be only the third Washingtonian inductee into the Rock Hall. The others are Jimi Hendrix and former KJR-AM disc jockey Pat O’Day.

 • Wilson and Bogle are the only Ventures who still live in Washington. They live in Sammamish and Vancouver, respectively.

Ernest A. Jasmin, The News Tribune

 • See The Ventures inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at 8:30 p.m. today on VH1 Classic. The show will appear on the big screen at Puyallup’s Liberty Theater, 116 W. Main St. Doors will open at 7 p.m.

Originally published: March 10th, 2008 01:19 AM (PDT)