Tribute show to Ventures’ guitarist Nokie Edwards features last surviving member
The last of the original Ventures will come out of retirement Sunday to play at a fund raiser in honor of his former band mate, Nokie Edwards.
“I haven’t picked up a guitar since 2015,” said Don Wilson, 85.
Edwards, the legendary guitarist for the Tacoma surf band, died March 12 at age 82.
Along with Wilson, several other bands will perform Sunday at Tacoma's Temple Theatre, said organizer Ed Troyer. The event is meant as a tribute to Edwards and as a fund raiser for Groove Music for Youth, a non-profit that provides musical instruments for at-risk youth.
With an estimated 100 million record sales the Ventures set the standard for instrumental guitar rock in the 1960s and 1970s.
Hits that included “Walk, Don’t Run” and the theme song for “Hawaii Five-O” propelled their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008.
Ventures founders Bob Bogle and Wilson were brick layers when they bought guitars and chord books at a pawn shop 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 with 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.
Gerry McGee replaced Edwards in 1968.
The band scored the No. 2 hit in the country with “Walk, Don’t Run” in 1960.
Wilson said the Ventures were one of the first hit makers 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.
Edwards played bass guitar until switching to lead guitar in 1961. Wilson said the Ventures would not have been as successful without Edwards, who started playing guitar when he was 8 years old.
“If it weren’t for Nokie, we’d had been lucky to get a total of four to six albums,” Wilson said. “The astounding part to me is that we’ve had 280 different albums.”
An enduring segment of the Venture’s popularity lies in Japan.
“They just really liked our sound,” Wilson said. “We’ve sold 60 million records in Japan alone.”
On their first visit to Japan, the band was treated like they were the Beatles coming to America.
“We were filling places with lines around the block,” Wilson said.
Within a few years dozens of Ventures tribute bands popped up in Japan. Some still play today.
In 2010, the band received the Order of the Rising Sun medal — a reflection of their contribution to Japan’s culture.
“Japan is our second home,” Wilson said. “We made a lot of friends there.”
He anticipates Sunday’s show to be nostalgic and entertaining.
“Believe me, it’ll be a good time for everybody,” he said.
CELEBRATING THE MUISCAL LIFE OF THE VENTURES' NOKIE EDWARDS
WHEN: 3-9 p.m. Sunday (June 3).
WHERE: Temple Theatre, 47 St. Helens Ave., Tacoma.
WITH: Don Wilson, Climax Blues Band and others.
TICKETS: $20 at nokie.brownpapertickets.com\ and at the door.
This story was originally published May 31, 2018 at 1:15 PM with the headline "Tribute show to Ventures’ guitarist Nokie Edwards features last surviving member."