Petition to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

Attachment 2 - The Ventures: A History in Music

The music of The Ventures, as every fan knows, has a very distinctive sound -- one that is unmistakable in its simplicity and its universal appeal. But that sound has evolved over the almost-40 year history of The Ventures.

The 1950s: In 1959, The Ventures recorded two singles, which included the songs "Cookies and Coke" and "The Real McCoy," and "The Twomp" and "Heart on My Sleeve." These vocal songs featured the background music that heralded the beginnings of The Ventures' guitar-rich sound. But the records, published on The Ventures' own Blue Horizon label, didn't sell.

The 1960s: The Ventures went back to the recording studio and came up with "Walk, Don't Run," which was released in 1960. "Walk, Don't Run" soon became The Ventures' first hit single, and it is the trademark song by which they are best known. It established forever the format, the style, and the sound that would define The Ventures -- driving guitars with an strong underlying drum beat. Other hit singles followed throughout the decade of the 1960s, including "Perfidia," "Lullaby of the Leaves," "Slaughter on 10th Avenue," "Diamond Head," "Walk, Don't Run '64," and "Hawaii Five-0." However, The Ventures' real success was in the album charts, where they placed a remarkable 37 albums during the period 1960 to 1972. In fact, they rank 6th among all 1960s recording artists on the album charts, behind the likes of The Beatles, Frank Sinatra, Elvis, Ray Conniff, and Ray Charles.

By the mid-1960s, The Ventures had already made several concert tours to Japan and were beginning to grow in popularity in that country. Around that time, they started to record albums specifically for the Japanese market featuring Japanese "pop" songs like "Hokkaido Skies," "Kyoto Doll," and "Reflections in a Palace Lake." These Japanese "pop" tunes were soft ballads, as compared with the "rock" style songs popular in the U.S.

The 1970s: With the growing popularity of the softer ballads in Japan, in the early-1970s, The Ventures recorded a few albums with similar style music in the U.S. Among songs recorded during this period were instrumental versions of the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun" and "Close to You," the Jerome Kern 1930s standard "The Way You Look Tonight," such Jim Croce folk rock ballads as "Time in a Bottle," and "pop" versions of Beethoven's "Sonata in C Minor" and "9th Symphony."

By the late-1970s, the "rock" music scene in the U.S. was starting to turn to "disco." Although The Ventures tried to follow that trend, with "disco" versions of Glenn Miller's "Moonlight Serenade" and an updated "Walk, Don't Run '77," The Ventures' "disco" style albums didn't sell very well. Slowly, the popularity of The Ventures in their home country declined as the rest of the U.S. embrassed the repetitive "dance all night" beat of "disco."

On the other hand, the popularity of The Ventures continued to grow in Japan, and they almost completely gave up on the U.S. market and started recording albums exclusively for sale in Japan. One of their Japanese albums (which has a personal appeal to me because of my Hispanic background) was The Latin Album. This recording featured such Latin classics as "Andalucia," "Spanish Eyes," "Guantanamera," and "Cuando Caliente el Sol" -- beautiful ballads in any language, but not quite the driving rock and roll that had brought The Ventures commercial success in the U.S. during the 1960s.

The 1980s: During the 1980s, The Ventures' recording output declined considerably (for reasons which I have yet to determine). In addition to a few more Japanese-only albums, in 1980 they released a double album of their greatest hits, re-recorded and released on their own Tridex label. In 1983, they recorded a special album to commemorate NASA's 25th anniversary. The NASA 25th Anniversary album is (in my opinion) the one album that is furthest -- musically -- from the trademark Ventures sound. It contains space and science fiction-related music -- like medleys from "Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind," "Star Trek," "2001," and "Star Wars" -- that feature a heavy "disco" influence, but with the guitars almost undetectable.

A notable late-1980s album, called Compact Ventures, brought somewhat of a return to "rock and roll" by The Ventures, with reggae-influenced versions of 1960s "rock and roll" classics like "Runaway," "Johnny Angel," "It's My Party," and "Save the Last Dance for Me." This album also featured two newer Ventures songs, "Showdown in Newport" and "Surfin' and Spyin'" (which reportedly was written for The Ventures by the Go-Go's).

The 1990s: Throughout the 1980s and the early-1990s, The Ventures continued to record many albums strictly for the Japanese market. Those albums contained mainly soft ballads, including movie themes like "Chariots of Fire," "Never Ending Story," and "St. Elmo's Fire" and Japanese "pop" tunes like "Snows of Nagano," "Kimi Ga Irudakede," and "Namida No Kiss."

By the mid-1990s, perhaps helped by the soundtrack of the movie Pulp Fiction (which featured many surf rock tunes made popular by The Ventures), they began to enjoy a resurgence of popularity in the U.S. In 1995, GNP Crescendo released a CD containing all of The Ventures songs originally included in the 1963 album Surfing plus some more recent live tracks and newer surf-style recordings. Then in 1996, The Ventures returned full force to their "rock and roll" roots with the album Wild Again, which featured the driving guitars and pounding drums that are their trademark sound. Wild Again, originally released only in Japan, enjoyed a 1997 U.S. release on GNP Crescendo. It received widespread critical acclaim, and was followed up with Wild Again II (again released only in Japan). Wild Again and Wild Again II are high-powered, adrenalin-inducing albums from beginning to end. Like fine wine, The Ventures seem to just get better and better with age, and I'm ready to Venture with them into the 21st Century!

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Last Updated: January 1, 2003