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The Ventures, the instrumental band which was the bedrock on which surf music was built, were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 10th this year. Started by two masonry workers from Tacoma Washington, Don Wilson and Bob Bogle, in 1958, the Ventures made their first appearance in the hit parade with “Walk Don’t Run” in 1960. They do not consider themselves a surf band and I remember that I didn’t either back in the early sixties when I was first a surf fan. The Beach Boys and Jan and Dean were surf music to me and the Ventures were those wankers with funny guitars.

Mosrite made an endorsement deal with the Ventures and brought out a line of Ventures model instruments in 1963. Previous to that (and afterwards) the Ventures played mostly Fender instruments. Fender released a Ventures series of guitars in the mid 1990s.

The Mosrites are cool looking though. Here are the Ventures plaing “Walk Don’t Run” on their Ventures model guitars in 1964.

In 1972, Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen recorded a song written in 1955 by Charlie Ryan and W. S. Stevenson. A young guitarist named Bill Kirchen was in the band at that time and played the lead guitar part on the song . “Hot Rod Lincoln,” a rockabilly song from the fifties, became a top ten hit for Commander Cody at the dawn of of the disco era.

Here is a clip of Bill Kirchen playing “Hot Rod Lincoln” at the Philadelphia Folk Festival. Bill has added a few things to the song along the way.

Joe Turner began singing on street corners and then in speakeasys in his home town of Kansas City, MO in the 1920s. There he met his longtime musical partner, boogie woogie piano player Pete Jonson. Turner and Johnson developed jump blues sound which was picked up by performers like Wynonie Harris and Louis Jordan. Turner and Johnson moved to New York in 1936 and appeared with Benny Goodman and were invited to take part in one of John Hammond’s “From Spirituals to Swing” concerts at Carnegie Hall. In 1941 Joe Turner became a part of Duke Ellington’s Jump for Joy review in Hollywood, CA. He also toured with Count Basie’s orchestra.

This song, which Big Joe Turner recorded in 1954 was covered, in a cleaned up version by Bill Haley & His Comets and became a rock and roll standard. Turner’s version would technically be considered jump blues, but because of the association with Bill Haley, it is considered rock and roll. The difference is really only in the number of wind instruments in the band or the prominence of the guitar.

Turner continued to perform, mostly at European jazz festivals, into the 1980s. He was inducted, posthumously, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.