Don Wilson, founder and rhythm guitarist of the Ventures instrumental rock band, has passed away at the age, 88.
Wilson’s family first ConfirmedSaint Bryan, a Seattle journalist, said that the guitarist was his. “passed peacefully”Tacoma Washington, natural causes
“Our dad was an amazing rhythm guitar player who touched people all over world with his band, The Ventures,” Don’s son Tim Wilson said in a statement. “He will have his place in history forever and was much loved and appreciated. He will be missed.”
Wilson and guitarist/bassist Bob Bogle formed the Ventures in 1958 when they were both Seattle-area construction workers moonlighting as musicians; just two years later, the Ventures’ electric guitar-led rendition of Johnny Smith’s “Walk, Don’t Run”It was ranked Number Two on the Hot 100 and later became one of the most popular songs in the world. Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time.
“[“Walk, Don’t Run”] started a whole new movement in rock & roll,” John Fogerty said when inducting the Ventures into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “The sound of it became ‘surf music’ and the audacity of it empowered guitarists everywhere.”
The Ventures issued a re-recorded version. “Walk, Don’t Run” in 1964 — amid the surf rock explosion — it once again placed in the Top 10. The band would have many hits in the first half the Sixties. “Telstar,” “Perfidia”Here’s a variation on the theme “Hawaii Five-O.”
Before their induction in 2008 the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame referred to them as the Ventures “the quintessential instrumental rock and roll band.” “Few bands are as prolific as the Ventures—they released thirty-seven albums in twelve years, many of them thematic,”The Rock Hall . “They rocked America in the sixties and went on to lasting international fame and influence.”
Eddie Van Halen, a former teller, was among those who were influenced. Rolling Stone that the Ventures’ “Pipeline”It was one of the first songs that he learned when learning to play guitar. The Beach Boys also learned the guitar by listening to the Ventures’ records, Carl Wilson once said.
Over the span of 40 albums (and potentially hundreds), the Ventures primarily recorded instrumental rock covers of other artists’ hits, but when the band did write their own music, it was often Wilson and Bogle who penned it; Wilson is also known for his penmanship “Love Goddess of Venus,” from 1964’s Ventures in Space.
While the Ventures continue to perform with a completely different lineup, Wilson was the lone surviving member of the band’s “classic,”Rock Hall-inducted group: Mel Taylor, the drummer, died in 1996. Bogle was inducted in 2009, Nokie Edwards as lead guitarist in 2018, and Gerry McGee as guitarist in 2019.