BOB Bogle was a founding member of the Ventures, the long-running guitar band whose jaunty 1960 hit Walk – Don't Run became an early standard of instrumental rock 'n' roll and taught generations of guitarists how to make their solos sparkle.
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ugh not the first instrumental band of the rock era, the Ventures were the most successful and enduring, applying their twangy, high-energy sound to dozens of albums. Older than the typical teenage garage band, the members of the Ventures cut wholesome figures, their guitar gymnastics coming across as good, clean sport.
Bogle and Don Wilson, two young construction workers and novice guitar enthusiasts, started the group in Tacoma, Washington, in 1958. Unable to attract a record label, they founded their own, Blue Horizon.
Their first single, Cookies and Coke, was a flop, but for their second they chose Walk – Don't Run, a tune by the jazz guitarist Johnny Smith that Bogle had discovered on a Chet Atkins album. The Ventures transformed the gentle original with a quick tempo and bright, punchy guitars. Bogle played the lead part, punctuating the melodies with springy vibrato and various noise-making tricks.
In the summer of 1960 the single became first a US regional hit and then, with distribution by the Liberty label, a national one. It eventually reached No 2 and sold 2 million copies. Later that year, when the group prepared to tour, it enlisted a more dexterous guitarist, Nokie Edwards, and Bogle moved permanently to bass guitar. Howie Johnson was the drummer in the original band, later to be replaced by Mel Taylor.
Walk – Don't Run became the Ventures' formula, applied on hundreds of subsequent records. That same year, 1960, they had another hit with their instrumental version of Perfidia, a much-covered song by the Mexican songwriter Alberto Domínguez. (Charlie Parker, Glenn Miller, Nat King Cole and Linda Ronstadt, among others, have also recorded versions.)
The band covered pop hits, television theme songs and various novelties in the signature Ventures style, including Johnny Cash's I Walk the Line, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue and the Batman theme. Psychedelic albums followed in the late 1960s, and in 1972 the Ventures covered Theme From 'Shaft', the blaxploitation classic by Isaac Hayes.
The Ventures scored a total of six US top 40 hits throughout the 1960s, including a surf remake of Walk – Don't Run, which reached No 8 in 1964, and a version of the Hawaii Five-O television theme, which went to No 4 in 1969.
In 1965 the group released an instructional album, Play Guitar With the Ventures, and over the years many top rock guitarists, including George Harrison and John Fogerty, have acknowledged a debt to the band.
By the 1970s, the Ventures' popularity had begun to wane in the United States, although they remained successful in Japan, where they had toured from their earliest years to the present; confounding record collectors, the group made dozens of albums exclusively for release in Japan.
Among Bogle's survivors are his wife, Yumi; three brothers; a sister; five sons; a daughter; and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
The full article contains 536 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
