1960 Songs: Walk, Don’t Run

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Before we get to the top ten, we close out these 65-year-old songs’ alphabetical list with two instrumentals. And here we have another case of “don’t stop me if you’ve heard this before,” where the most popular recording dates to 1960 but the song itself is older. Let’s get to rockin’! Walk, Don’t Run - The Ventures And honestly, I was this month years old when I discovered that this was originally a jazz song. Johnny Smith wrote this and originally recorded it in 1954. It’s a really neat recording, if you want to look it up. Three years later, Chet Atkins covered it, generally keeping the more mellow style of the original. However, The Ventures, an instrumental group from Washington state (so grunge wasn’t the first music to come out of there! ), heard something different. There’s a quite a difference in the Atkins version and what The Ventures put out. Of course, there was a MASSIVE change in music between 1957 and 1960. This is one of the most covered and best remembered instrumentals of the “surf guitar” era. Walk, Don’t Run Written by Johnny Smith Recorded by The Ventures From Walk, Don’t Run, 1960 I swear, it must have been a requirement to clap on one and three on Dick Clark’s Saturday Night Beechnut Show, where this clip comes from: