Mark's 93/KHJ 1972 MixTape #35

The beginning of this series can be read here.

This time out, we have the theme from the TV series Hawaii Five-O — the original one, the one with Jack Lord — as performed by The Ventures, a band I always associated with songs about surfing. As I look over their discography, I don't see a lot of that but I think their sound — guitars, bass and drums — more or less defined surf music, a popular genre for about a year and a half, I think.

Their version of the Hawaii Five-O theme was so popular that a lot of people think they recorded it for the TV show. They didn't.  But here they are performing it on some TV show somewhere at some time.  I assume that four of the five guys playing are the four who made up the core of The Ventures: Bob Bogle, Nokie Edwards, Gerry McGee and Don Wilson. But they sometimes added a member or two for certain performances and here, they've added a second drummer…and it's Max Weinberg!

And hey, did you know the song has lyrics? Sammy Davis Jr. recorded them and here's a video that my pal Lee Goldberg once posted to YouTube. It's Sammy's record laid over video from a couple of different title sequences from the original TV series…