Nokie Edwards
Lead guitarist with the 1960s instrumentalists the Ventures
NOKIE EDWARDS, who has died aged 82, was lead guitarist of the Ventures, the influential but littleremembered US instrumental group whose hits in the 1960s included Walk
Don’t Run and the theme to the television crime series Hawaii Five-o.
Edwards was spotted playing in a bar in Spokane, Washington, in 1958 by the band’s co-founders, Don Wilson and Bob Bogle. Bogle then played lead, with Wilson on rhythm guitar. They invited Edwards to become their bassist. All three had day jobs in the building industry.
The line-up was completed by the drummer Skip Moore, who chose to forego royalties in return for a $25 session fee when, in 1960, they recorded a faster version of Chet Atkins’s jazzy Walk Don’t Run.
After the track was picked up to introduce the news on a Seattle radio station, it was released as a single, reaching No 2 in the US charts, selling a million copies and only being kept off the top by Elvis Presley’s It’s Now or Never.
Soon Bogle and Edwards had traded roles. Thereafter, the band’s sound was defined by Edwards’s fluid blending of riffs and melody, as well as his use of reverb and distortion. The Ventures re-released Walk Don’t Run in 1964, in Edwards’s version, and it again made the Top 10.
Although they had several other hit songs, the Ventures concentrated on recording albums, selling some 110 million records. They were among the first to have themes to albums, an example being The Colorful Ventures (1961), which included among its tracks Yellow Jacket and Red Fire. Somewhat cynically, they would feature on their LPS cover versions of new releases which they thought might be hits, so getting their recording into the shops before the original had climbed the charts.
Although, for instance, Wipe Out became a signature track for the Ventures, it was actually written by the Surfaris. The Ventures also had a hit in the US with Telstar, more familiar to British audiences as being by the Tornados.
The Ventures would go on to have some 38 hit albums, including the first instructional LP for guitarists to make the charts. As well as inspiring the development of surf music – Edwards composed Surf Rider, which appears in the film Pulp Fiction – the Ventures were credited by George Harrison, Carl Wilson (of the Beach Boys) and Joe Walsh (of the Eagles) with influencing their playing. “If you can hum it,” Edwards said, “you can have a hit.”
One of 13 children, he was born Nole Floyd Edwards at the farming community of Lahoma, Oklahoma, on May 9 1935. “Nokie” was a nickname (derived from “Okies”) given him by his father, a migrant fruit picker.
His mother was a Cherokee and when Nokie was a boy the family was forced to move off the land she owned after hostility from local merchants. They migrated in a horse-drawn wagon to Puyallup, Washington, having stopped off in Idaho.
There Nokie made his professional debut on the air, aged 12, with bluegrass and country tunes. He had begun to play the guitar at five, later adding the banjo, fiddle and bass to his repertoire.
The Ventures scored a No 4 hit in 1968 with the Hawaii Five-o theme tune (it was brought back in 2010 when the series was revived). Edwards left the band to pursue a solo career, but returned in 1973, by which time their popularity had ebbed at home. They remained huge in Japan.
In his seventies Edwards was nominated for two Grammys, for 20th Century Gospel and Southern Meets Soul, and he took a small role in the Western series Deadwood, as a friend of Wild Bill Hickok.
He is survived by his third wife, Judy, and a daughter. Another daughter predeceased him.
Nokie Edwards, born May 9 1935, died March 12 2018