Don Lee Wilson (10 February 1933 - 22 January 2022) was an American guitarist who was a founding member of the instrumental surf-rock group

the Ventures The Ventures are an American instrumental rock band formed in Tacoma, Washington, in 1958, by Don Wilson and Bob Bogle. The band, which was a quartet for most of its existence, helped to popularize the electric guitar across the world during the ...

. In 2008, Wilson and other members of the band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Performer category. Wilson was the last surviving member of the classic line-up of the Ventures following the death of

Nokie Edwards Nole Floyd "Nokie" Edwards (May 9, 1935 – March 12, 2018) was an American musician and member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was primarily a guitarist, best known for his work with The Ventures, and was known in Japan as the 'Ki ...

in 2018, before Wilson's own death in January 2022.

Early life

Wilson was born in

Tacoma, Washington Tacoma ( ) is the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. A port city, it is situated along Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, and northwest of Mount Rainier National Pa ...

and was a middle child. The family heritage is mixed, his mother, Josie, was first-generation Swedish, while his father was of Welsh and Irish descent. His mother would show him how to play chords on the tipple when he was around 12 years old.

Career

In 1958, Wilson and Bob Bogle met

and invited him as a member of the group. Edwards played guitar and Bogle switched to bass. In 1960, Wilson's mother, with $100, produced and sold a cover of

Chet Atkins Chester Burton Atkins (June 20, 1924 – June 30, 2001), known as "Mr. Guitar" and "The Country Gentleman", was an American musician who, along with Owen Bradley and Bob Ferguson, helped create the Nashville sound, the country music ...

instrumental song "

Walk, Don't Run ''Walk, Don't Run'' is a 1966 American comedy film directed by Charles Walters and starring Cary Grant, Samantha Eggar, and Jim Hutton. The film, which was Grant's last film role, is set during the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. It is a remake ...

". Unable to play the original jazz version, they instead played it in a more calmer and smoother way. This is now recognized as

surf music Surf music (or surf rock, surf pop, or surf guitar) is a genre of rock music associated with surf culture, particularly as found in Southern California. It was especially popular from 1958 to 1964 in two major forms. The first is instrumental su ...

. The line-up at the time consisted of Wilson, Bogle, Edwards and Howie Johnson (drums), before Johnson was replaced with

Mel Taylor Mel Taylor (September 24, 1933 – August 11, 1996) was an American musician, best known as the drummer for the Ventures from 1962 to 1996. He was born in Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York, and was the older brother of Canned Heat bassist Larry Ta ...

. "Walk, Don't Run" reached number two on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100, and has been described as what "started a whole new movement in rock & roll" by John Fogerty. The Ventures' song "Wild Child" was sampled by

the Wiseguys The Wiseguys were a British electronic duo active in the mid to late 1990s. They produced the song "Start the Commotion", which was featured in a Mitsubishi TV advertisement, as well as the films ''The Lizzie McGuire Movie'', '' Zoolander'' a ...

on " Start the Commotion", giving Wilson his only hit writing credit on the British charts, reaching number 47 and spending 2 weeks on the chart. In 1968, they released a single titled "

Hawaii Five-O Hawaii Five-O or Hawaii Five-0 may refer to: * ''Hawaii Five-0'' (2010 TV series), an American action police procedural television series * ''Hawaii Five-O'' (1968 TV series), an American police procedural drama series produced by CBS Productio ...

" and is now known as the theme tune to the show of the same name. Some of the group's other notable songs include " Wipe Out" and "

Pipeline Pipeline may refer to: Electronics, computers and computing * Pipeline (computing), a chain of data-processing stages or a CPU optimization found on ** Instruction pipelining, a technique for implementing instruction-level parallelism within a s ...

". Wilson continued to tour with the Ventures until 2015, when he retired. The band has continued to perform without any original members. Wilson was present when the Ventures were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008. The Ventures have since released over 250 studio albums, 150 singles and 80 compilation albums, and have left a large impact on instrumental music. Eddie Van Halen is among one of many musicians who have been influenced by the band; with Halen quoting their song

to have been one of the first songs he learned how to play on the guitar.

Personal life and death

Wilson had two children, Tim and Staci. Staci is a writer and filmmaker who directed a documentary about the Ventures titled ''The Ventures: Stars on Guitars in 2020''. Wilson died of natural causes on January 22, 2022, aged 88. He was the last surviving member of his band's classic line up.

Early life

Career

Personal life and death

Discography

References

See also