Nokie dies
Famed musician was a Yuma resident
Nokie Edwards, a Yuma resident for the past decade and the influential lead guitarist for the 1960’s surf-style band The Ventures, died Monday at Yuma Regional Medical Center at the age of 82.
He and his wife lived a quiet life in the Foothills after being drawn to the area when he performed in a March 2008 fundraiser here. But he continued to tour the U.S. and the world to play for fans until a little more than a year ago.
Judy Edwards said her husband rarely performed publicly in Yuma once they had made it their home. “He was very much on tour, but when we would come back at home, many of his friends were having jams or barbecues, or celebrations or sometimes fundraisers, so we would join in with them.
“Everybody we met, just about, was a musician,” she said, with a laugh.
The Ventures were an instrumental group founded in Washington state in the late 1950s by guitarists Bob Bogle and Don Wilson, with Edwards joining soon after. They helped create the driving, twangy surf sound that influenced the Beach Boys among others and were best known for the hits “Walk, Don’t Run,” on which Edwards played bass, and the theme for the TV show “Hawaii Five-O.”
The Ventures sold millions of records and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, when they were introduced by John Fogerty. The Rock Hall praised the Ventures as “the most successful instrumental combo in rock and roll history.”
Although their prime years were in the 1960s, they continued to tour over the following decades, with Edwards a member off and on until 1984. The band enjoyed renewed attention in the 1990s after Quentin Tarantino featured their song “Surf Rider” on the “Pulp Fiction” soundtrack.
“Nokie split up with the Ventures a couple of times but he always seemed to go back to them. I guess when you’re brothers you’re brothers. Even brothers fight, huh?” Judy Edwards said.
A message on the group’s website, www.theventures.com, reads: “Nokie has been part of the Ventures’ history for almost 6 decades and helped to shape the early Ventures’ sound and the success of their career. He was an innovator and one of the greats on guitar, so much so that he influenced many young players over the course of his career.”
Edwards was born Nole Floyd Edwards in Lahoma, Okla. He was a professional guitar player by age 12 and was playing in Buck Owens’ band at the time Bogle and Wilson met him. He continued to tour in recent years, and also appeared on the HBO drama “Deadwood.”
“He loved music so much, and it was a huge part of him, you know. Even when we pretty much lost everything a few times, and of course when you get older it’s harder to get it back again, it was mostly over health issues,” Judy Edwards said. “But he never stopped playing; that’s what brought us happiness even in our darkest moments.”
He did play and tour as much as he could, with a special focus on Japan. The Ventures’ various lineups have performed there and made it a “second home” since they first broke out in the ‘60s, and are known as the first American rock band to make it “big in Japan,” where they outsold the Beatles.
Nokie Edwards was a star in his own right in Japan, and a good percentage of the messages posted on his wife’s Facebook page since her husband’s death are in Japanese.
They were together 31 years, said Judy Edwards, and worked on his tour as a team, as she handled booking the gigs, fan clubs, designing his costumes and CD covers, and so on. “We were one,” she said.
The couple first came through Yuma in their RV to visit friends who had retired here, and while here saw a news story about Neveah Vasquez, a 3-month-old baby girl from the area who had been born with severe heart defects. They decided they wanted to help, and raised $6,800 with Nokie headlining an 8-hour concert at Crazy Earl’s Cocktails and Pool.
“That really, really made us feel good. And then Nokie and I kind of looked at each other and said, ‘I think this little town needs us. I think we need to settle down here. And we met a lot of good people when we did that,” Judy Edwards said.
The home they bought was two houses down from Herb Townsend, the drummer for a local band, the Upper Room. Townsend became the go-to guy for fans wanting Nokie to autograph albums, guitars or other belongings.
“He was a real good friend. He had a band after the Ventures called HitchHiker, and when they would practice Judy would give me a call and say ‘come on down,’ and I went down. I even sat in on a song,” Townsend said.
Nokie Edwards’ last public performance was in Medford, Ore., in January 2017, which was nearly canceled when he became ill before the show.
“He came down very, very sick,” his wife said, “and he wouldn’t go to the emergency room because he had a show to do. And the promoter, along with me, were almost trying to force him to go to the ER but he wouldn’t give up. He said the fans came to see his show.”
He did seek treatment after the show, but never really recovered. He had a hip replacement last December after a fall, but an antibiotic-resistant infection entered the wound, reaching down to the bone, Judy Edwards said.
“He was pretty much bedridden towards the end. But yet the doctors kept trying for us. He was a fighter, a real fighter. He had plans, still. He wanted to play again, of course,” she said.
His death has been noted by media outlets around the world, including the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Reuters, Rolling Stone, Guitar Player, Billboard and Japan Times.
Between the two of them, Nokie and Judy Edwards had four children (one deceased), 25 grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren and four greatgreat grandchildren.
Judy Edwards said funeral arrangements are pending, but the family plans to hold a series of memorial services for her husband, reaching out to different friends and relatives: “We’re going to do a memorial here in Yuma, first, one in California, in Oregon, Washington, Tennessee and Japan. We’re going to take him back out on tour.”