An Early Guitar Master, Dead At 75

by Tom Cole

Start music: then read

I wanted to be Bob Bogle (and later Nokie Edwards, The Ventures' bass player, who switched places with Bogle at lead guitar). I wanted to be Dick Dale, too. But The Ventures came first.

The Ventures (left to right: Mel Taylor, Don Wilson, Bob Bogle, John Durrill, Gerry McGee) pose for a portrait in the late 1960s. (photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

Bob Bogle, co-founder of The Ventures, died Sunday at the age of 75. He suffered from non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.

The Ventures will always be remembered for Walk, Don't Run and an early-'60s West Coast rock sound. The influence of Walk, Don't Run is HUGE. While few guitarists could master the smooth alternate picking of the Johnny Smith original or the distinctive fingerwork of Chet Atkins' remake, The Ventures provided a way in for every kid who touched an electric guitar in the early 1960s.

The Ventures became known as The Band That Launched a Thousand Bands. Every budding guitarist I knew in junior high could pick out a rudimentary version of Walk, Don't Run.

The Ventures' co-founders, Don Wilson and Bob Bogle, heard the tune on a Chet Atkins LP. The story goes that they met at Wilson's dad's car dealership in Tacoma, Wash., where the younger Wilson was struggling as a salesman. Bogle was working construction, and the money was more dependable, so Wilson quit selling cars.

Wilson told The News Tribune of Tacoma, "We found out that we each knew a few chords on the guitar, you know, and we had a lot of time on our hands. But neither of us owned a guitar."

So they went to a Tacoma pawn shop and bought two guitars and a chord book, and a band was born. Not too different from the stories of the thousands of musicians who followed them.

Wilson played rhythm guitar and Bogle played lead; he learned how to work the vibrato bar (players call it a whammy bar, and it's attached to the guitar's bridge, allowing the player to bend strings) to create a kind of liquid sound that became one of The Ventures' trademarks. That and the reverb that Dick Dale pioneered became the defining sounds of surf music.

There's something infectious about the sound of instrumental rock from the West Coast back then. The Ventures were based in the Pacific Northwest, while the surf bands lived down south. The melodies are simple and the beat is driving.

It makes you want to play.

It makes you feel like you actually could play.

Thanks, Bob Bogle. Rest in peace, knowing you inspired a bunch of us.

4:30 PM ET | 06-16-2009 | permalink

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