Nole Floyd "Nokie" Edwards (May 9, 1935 – March 12, 2018) was an American musician and member of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was primarily a guitarist, best known for his work with The Ventures. Edwards was also an actor, who appeared briefly on Deadwood, an AmericanWestern drama television series.

Here's some great footage of them playing live in Japan back in 2004:

 

Rest in Peace
The last one from original era

From Wikipedia:

The Ventures pioneered the use of special effects on such songs as "The 2000 Pound Bee", recorded in late 1962, in which lead guitarist Nokie Edwards employed a fuzz distortion pedal.Edwards' use of "fuzz tone" predated the "King of Fuzz Guitar", Davie Allan of The Arrows, by at least three years. In addition, Edwards was among the first to use the twelve-string guitar in rock. The 1964 The Ventures In Space album was a primer in the use of special guitar effects, and made pioneering use of 'reverse-tracking'. The Ventures In Space, because of its ethereal space-like effects, was deemed an influence on the later 1960s San Francisco psychedelic generation, as well as being cited as a favorite by Keith Moon of the Who.

The band's cover of the Tornados' "Telstar" (released in January 1963) featured one of the first instances of flanging on a pop record. The song "Silver Bells" on The Ventures' Christmas Album, released in November 1965, has one of the first recorded uses of a vocoder as a musical effect, voiced by Red Rhodes.Rhodes was responsible for devising many of the effects seen on Ventures records, and was the inventor of the fuzzbox.

 

RIP, Nokie.

I always loved the Ventures sound. It seemed so new and unique to me that I thought of the band as being from the future. I was just a wee little tyke, but that sound sure was impactful.

 

I had thought that Marty Robbins was the first to use fuzz in 1960, but according to this article
Sanford Clark used it earlier that same year. Unfortunately for Clark, his single went virtually unnoticed while the Marty Robbins single got pretty wide exposure.

 

True, i´ve missed it. Had to download the song to listen, because yt didn´t work for me. But yes, there is fuzz, lite version of it though, but definitely the earliest I heard of.

 

http://www.mosriteguitars.com are still in business Who knew?