In 1984, I was the superintendent for a construction crew building a strip center for H-E-B Food/Drugs near Mustang Island, on the outskirts of Corpus Christi, in the town of Flour Bluff.

A couple of years before, I had been on the crew that built the H-E-B Food-Drug store on the property. I can’t remember which project it was of these two, but after work one evening, some of the workers were barbecuing outside our hotel rooms just a couple blocks away from the construction site.

I provided ‘entertainment’ from the opened door of my room on a portable turntable blaring surf music out of the speakers. We sat in lawn chairs and on truck tailgates around our homemade pits made out of refrigerant cylinders and 55 gallon drums telling old stories, laughing and just hanging out.

Four guys we had never seen at the hotel before (we’d been there for a couple of months by then) walked out of their rooms and waved. As our custom, we said hello and invited them to come eat and drink a beer or two with us. They accepted.

As we ate and drank together we started talking about the music playing. It was an album by a band founded in 1958, but really popular in the 1960s.

They grinned, and one of them mentioned they were in a band playing at a club in Corpus for a couple of nights.

We were getting along, and one of us said we would go see them the next night of their first show.

We asked them what kind of music they played. “Like the music you’re playing right now.” We laughed about the coincidence.

Larry Colson, our painting foreman, asked them about the name of their band. No doubt the magic of serendipity was on us. We were eating barbeque and drinking beer with the bestselling instrumental rock band in music history: The Ventures! The group that was playing on my LP (record album).

Graciously–Don Wilson, Mel Taylor, Gerry McGee and Bob Spalding–signed my album cover (still have it) that night. They brought a couple of guitars out, showed us and we all sat around the fires of the pits, ate, drank and listened to a couple of the Ventures play late into the night. Some of us went to see them perform the next evening.

Old timers and rock history enthusiasts might remember some of their hits like “Walk, Don’t Run,” “Blue Moon, “Hawaii Five-O,” and “Secret Agent Man.”

A bit of trivia (as of 2023):

• In 2008, on their 50th anniversary, they were inducted in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. John Fogerty presented them the award. They have never taken a year off from concerts or recording.
• The Ventures have written over 1000 tunes, and recorded over 3000 songs altogether! If they ever decide to play all of the songs that they’ve ever recorded, it would take almost 5 days – without a break – to play them all.
• The Ventures have released over 250 albums including compilations! 37 of these have hit the US charts. Over 150 albums have been released in Japan.
• In addition to recording the hit version of Hawaii Five-O, The Ventures also contributed some of the incidental music heard in the background of the TV show.
• In the early 60’s, the band would record 4 to 6 albums a year. At one time, they had 5 albums in the top 100 simultaneously (1963).
• In 1993 the band received the coveted Lifetime Achievement Award from Guitar Player Magazine.
• Walk, Don’t Run, had already been named one of 20 Essential Rock Albums for guitarists, by Guitar Player Magazine, in 1987.
• During the 60’s, The Ventures outsold the Beatles in Japan two to one. For the year 1965, The Ventures had five of the top ten singles in Japan, per Billboard magazine (January 1966)
• In September, 1962, the band released their most controversial recording, Lolita Ya-Ya, the theme from the movie Lolita. Later that year, they released The 2,000 Pound Bee, the first single recording to use a fuzz-box guitar. This song was played at (Killer Bee) John Belushi’s funeral.
• The drummer on Walk, Don’t Run was Skip Moore. Skip was given the choice of $25 or 1/4 of the money the record would make for playing on the session. He took the 25 bucks! Another early drummer, George Babbitt, retired as a 4-star Air Force general.
• Gerry McGee played on the first two Monkees albums. The opening guitar chords on the Monkees theme song are his, as is the famous intro on Last Train to Clarksville. He has also played with Elvis Presley, Bobby Darin, Delany and Bonnie, Kris Kristofferson, the Everly Brothers, Linda Ronstadt, Ricky Nelson, Sandy Nelson, and Jerry Lee Lewis. His father, Denus, was a pioneering Cajun fiddle player.

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