The Colorful Ventures – The Ventures
This is the second in a series of articles where I select an album from each year since 1960 that is entirely unknown to me, as a way to explore some new (old!) music.
I have decided to pick one LP from every year from across a broad range of genres and styles, usually selecting albums that are highly rated by fans or critics, but that have somehow passed me by.
I started with 1960 as it’s a nice round number and preceding years have far fewer real non-classical albums from which to choose. That article was all about Drums Of Passion by Olatunji!, which turned out to be a great find.
This time around I’m cocking a couple of ears to (mostly) instrumental pioneers The Ventures’ fourth album The Colorful Ventures that was released in September or October 1961, depending on which source you believe.
However, there seems to be some uncertainty about the order and date of their albums with their own website claiming that it actually appeared in 1960 and some sites stating that it was only their third LP. I’m sticking with the above information though, for now, backed up by the reputable source of Record Collector magazine from their piece about the band back in August 1983!
My 1961
I was still almost a decade away from being born in 1961, so have no direct personal experience of that time. My mum and dad had got married in 1959 but were still five years away from starting a family in 1961.
While teaching science at Hertford Grammar, my dad was studying for a degree at Regent Street Polytechnic, making the twice-weekly trip on his scooter from Stevenage. My mum was also a teacher at this time.
Checking my iTunes library (which is very similar to my CD collection, but not a total match), shows me that I have nineteen other albums from 1961 – like 1960, far fewer than later in the decade, as this wasn’t exactly the golden age of pop music LPs.
iTunes says I have 699 songs overall from 1961, which is around 0.77% of my total collection and broadly similar to every other year between 1956 and 1962, after which the numbers shoot up quite significantly.
As previously promised, I shall no doubt be doing some more detailed digging into the profile of my music collection at some stage, fact fans!
My Top 5 albums of the year
I’ve recently listened to all of the nineteen other 1961 albums I have in order to decide on my five favourites and help place this ‘new’ one in context. So, in ascending order, with an awful lot of Frank Sinatra included, here they are:
My top 5 albums of 1961 (in ascending order)
5. Frank Sinatra – Sinatra’s Swingin’ Session!!! One of four swinging albums from Ol’ Blue Eyes in 1961, this one is perhaps more consistent than the two that I prefer, just with fewer of the absolute peaks. Half of the tunes are new versions of songs from 1950’s Sing And Dance With Frank Sinatra.
4. West Side Story – The Original Sound Track Recording. Almost certainly my #1 soundtrack album of all time, this includes the utterly spell-binding Maria and the Mexican-tinged America.
3. Frank Sinatra – Ring-A-Ding-Ding! George and Ira Gershwin’s A Foggy Day is my favourite on another swinging Frank LP.
2. Jerry Lee Lewis – Jerry Lee’s Greatest! Despite the name, this isn’t a compilation. One of only two LPs he released in around seven years with Sun Records, the clear peak on this is Great Balls Of Fire from 1957 that had not been included on his 1958 debut eponymous album. A version of Ray Charles’ What’d I Say is the other stone-cold killer on this album.
1. Frank Sinatra – Come Swing With Me! I have recently concluded that this is my favourite Sinatra album, very marginally ahead of 1959’s Come Dance With Me! This album has a classic run of four tracks on side one – Sentimental Journey, Almost Like Being In Love, Five Minutes More and American Beauty Rose.
Other 1961 LPs I own include two more Sinatra albums as that year was the crossover from his time on Capitol Records to Reprise Records. Also, this was the year of Judy At Carnegie Hall and albums by Bobby “Blue” Bland and Dave Van Ronk that I have.
To put this year into context, my number one album of this year would probably feature in my all-time Top 200, but outside the Top 100 – you can read about my Top 25 here, so I’d definitely not claim 1961 as one of the glory years in musical history.
My previous experience with the artist
Eight Classic Albums – The Ventures
In anticipation of writing this piece, I received the Eight Classic Albums 4-CD box set for my birthday last year from My Beloved Wife, managing to hold off on listening to it at all until this point.
In fact, at the time of publishing this article, I still have the latest four of the eight albums to give a debut play to.
I already had a few odd tracks of theirs on compilations, like Green Onions and Bumblebee Twist (The Wasp) on the double 60 Songs From The Cramps’ Crazy Collection: The Incredibly Strange Music Box and Zocko on Sounds Of The Unexpected, both previously (guided) gifts from My Beloved Wife.
Then Came Rock ‘N’ Roll
I was obviously extremely familiar with the title track of the first LP (Walk Don’t Run), which I actually used to have on a double cassette comp called Then Came Rock ‘N’ Roll, which I bought when it was issued way back in 1984 and was my first proper introduction to all the founding fathers of rock ‘n’ roll.
This tape gets a mention in my look back at My Early Musical Journey (1970-1987).
I gave the two albums on the first CD (December 1960’s Walk Don’t Run and Another Smash from June 1961) a spin before embarking on this album, as well as now also having heard the eponymous second LP from February 1961.
All of them are pleasant enough collections of instrumentals, with a proto-surf sound, each clocking in considerably under thirty minutes in length, like all of the eight LPs in the set.
Immediate highlights are the classic title track and The Switch from the debut, and great versions of (Ghost) Riders In The Sky (also recorded by the likes of Bing Crosby, Peggy Lee and Johnny Cash), The Fireballs’ Bulldog and Raw-Hide by Link Wray on Another Smash.
The history lesson
As you may well have already worked out, The Ventures actually released three albums in 1961! I’ve decided to look at the third of these, which is a concept record of sorts, with all of the numbers themed around colours.
This record was made by a line-up of Bob Bogle on lead guitar, rhythm guitarist Don Wilson, Nokie Edwards on bass and drummer Howie Johnson. The first two formed a duo called The Versatones, adopting the much better-known name in 1959.
Walk Don’t Run – The Ventures
Their version of Walk, Don’t Run sold over a million copies on 7”, but was kept off the US top spot by It’s Now Or Never by Elvis Presley With The Jordanaires.
However, it was the 25th best-selling single in the US in 1960. That’s an awful lot of singles breaking a million in the US that year!
The easy listening Theme From A Summer Place by Percy Faith was the top seller of that year, fact fans.
It made much less impact over here, peaking at #8 in the UK in October 1960.
Mel Taylor replaced Johnson in September 1962, with that line-up remaining together until 1968. They went on to become huge stars in Japan, with 1965’s Diamond Head becoming the first single to sell a million copies there. A widely reported stat is that The Ventures outsold The Beatles by two to one in Japan, although I’m not sure how true that is.
They are certainly revered there though, becoming the first rock or pop act to have the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette award bestowed on them when they received these in 2010.
Before I talk about the individual tracks, it’s worth commenting on the very cheesy album cover, with two of the band (now confirmed as Wilson (l) and Bogle (r) thanks to my American music-loving friend Bobby, who I could have guessed would know!) holding on to a cartoon balloon. As was usual back then, all of the songs are listed on the front cover, with the neat gimmick of small circle in the relevant colour next to its name.
It was designed by Pate/Francis & Associates, who also did some other Ventures albums as well as a selection of other oddball ones, such as these:
Pate Francis Associates covers
Josie Wilson, the mother of the band’s rhythm guitarist founded the Blue Horizon label in Seattle that issued the band’s work, and she produced this album with Bob Reisdorff who took a half share in the label, also running Dolton Records that had a #1 hit in the US (and Top 10 in the UK) with The Fleetwoods’ Come Softly To Me in 1959, when it was still known as Dolphin Records.
Johnson died in 1988, followed by Taylor in 1996, Bogle in 2009, Edwards in 2018 and finally Wilson in 2022. However, the band continue to this day, led by Bob Spalding who joined the band permanently in 2005, having first worked with them in 1980.
My thoughts
These are just my initial feelings about the album, based on a first listen only, so things will no doubt change over time as I get to know it better.
Side 1
The LP kicks off with Rodgers and Hart’s Blue Moon, which was originally written way back in 1934, though I now sadly associate it most with the 115’ers. Fortunately, this version is sufficiently different to make me forget that most of the time.
It hit #1 in the UK and US in early 1961 when recorded as a doo wop song by The Marcels, while I also own it in versions by The Beatles, Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Sha-Na-Na and Ella Fitzgerald.
The pretty groovy Yellow Jacket was written by the three strummers in the band.
Bluer Than Blue was penned by Dick Glasser and Tommy Allsup, with the former having also written songs I have by Gene Vincent, Dean Martin, Wanda Jackson and P.J. Proby. Allsup was a rockabilly guitarist who played with Buddy Holly and fortunately lost a coin toss with Ritchie Valens for a seat on the plane that crashed in February 1959, the legendary ‘day the music died’.
Allsup apparently plays lead guitar on his own composition, which is a little more forgettable than the preceding numbers, with some very subtle orchestral backing but some interesting drumming.
Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White is a well-known tune to me, probably mainly due to the rather cheesy Modern Romance version that hit the UK Top 20 in August 1982, although older readers may know the two number one hits in 1955 by Pérez Prado and (less interestingly) Eddie Calvert. This version is much twangier though.
Side 2
One of its co-writers was Mack David, Hal’s older brother, who was also involved in Baby It’s You, La Vie En Rose and the soundtracks to Cinderella and Alice In Wonderland.
Next up is Green Leaves Of Summer, whose tune was composed by Dimitri Tiomkin for the 1960 film The Alamo – a war film, though this tune seems as though it would have fit a spy movie or romantic drama set on the Amalfi coast.
He also co-wrote Wild Is The Wind which is on David Bowie’s Station To Station, with my collection also including a version by Nina Simone, while he was also involved in the High Noon soundtrack.
Side one closes with Irving Berlin’s gently rocking Blue Skies. Written in 1926 for the Rodgers and Hart musical Betsy, the audiences on opening night allegedly demanded 24 encores of the piece from star Belle Baker! I have versions of it sung by Bing Crosby (very laidback), Frank Sinatra (much more swinging), Willie Nelson (gentle but jolly) and Benny Goodman (unsurprisingly, much jazzier).
However, no version can surely top this one done by a coterie of prairie dogs in a 1979 episode of The Muppets:
Side two kicks off with the Shadows-y and rather dull Greenfields, written by Frank Miller, Richard Dehr and Terry Gilkyson of The Easy Riders, who all also wrote the excellent Memories Are Made Of This, which I have by Johnny Cash, Dean Martin (with The Easy Riders on backing vocals), The Drifters and, most memorably, The Everly Brothers.
Greenfields was much later sung by Michael Stipe from R.E.M., which is quite gorgeous:
Jazz clarinettist Woody Herman’s Red Top is much more like it, with some of-their-time vocal interruptions.
White Silver Sands by Charles Matthews was a hit for Don Rondo in 1957, with Bill Black’s Combo taking into the US Top 10 three years later. He also wrote Gene Vincent’s I Got A Baby that I have. This has a fairly strong resemblance to When The Saints Go Marching In at times.
Yellow Bird was composed by Alan Bergman, his future wife Marilyn Keith and Norman Luboff. I also have it performed in quite an easy listening style by The Arthur Lyman Group, while others to record this number include Eartha Kitt and Max Bygraves! Sadly, it’s pretty bland and plodding.
Back cover
Orange Fire was written by the band’s bassist, picking up the pace nicely as the album nears its close.
Curiously, I’d say the guitar and drumming are much more noticeable and interesting than any bass work on this.
Silver City ends the LP. It was written by Hank Levine, who orchestrated and arranged the whole album, also working with a whole host of doo wop and pop acts of the era, so he features in my collection on songs by The Crystals and Dick Dale And His Del-Tones.
In fact, you can hear hints of Dale in this number, as well as some brief, effective injections of brass.
The first play of this didn’t really wow me, with its three predecessors all piquing my interest more on their debut spins. I’ll obviously be giving it a few more chances over the coming year or two, but it was certainly about time I had some Ventures in my racks, even if the albums are a bit hit or miss.
Next time
A heads-up that for 1962 I’ll be listening to an album by a French chanteuse. This process has already proven to me to be a fascinating exercise in exploring new sounds, so stay tuned…
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Playlist
Here is the album on Spotify, the pick of my Top 5 albums of the year and a few other 1961 classics:
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