Bob Bogle, co-founder and original lead guitarist of the Ventures, the influential rock band whose hits included “Walk — Don’t Run” and the “Hawaii Five-0” TV theme, has died, He was 75.

Bogle, a resident of Vancouver, Wash., who suffered from non-Hodgkin lymphoma, died Sunday in a local hospital, said Don Wilson, who co-founded the Ventures with Bogle.

“His last four years have not been pleasant at all; it’s kind of a blessing he doesn’t have to endure that pain anymore,” Wilson said. “I never had a brother, but he’s the brother I never had. … He was one of the kindest men I ever met.”

Bogle and Wilson, who first met in Seattle in 1958, were doing masonry work together in 1959 when they formed their band.

The original members of the Ventures included Bogle on lead guitar, Wilson on rhythm guitar, Nokie Edwards on bass and Skip Moore, soon replaced by Howie Johnson, on drums.

Renowned for their “big guitar sound,” the Ventures first hit the Billboard singles chart in 1960 with “Walk — Don’t Run,” which peaked at No. 2.

“That song started a whole new movement in rock ’n’ roll,” John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival said while inducting the Ventures into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008. “The sound of it became ‘surf music,’ and the audacity of it empowered guitarists everywhere.”

Said Wilson: “Any guitar player would tell you, Bob is the most unique-sounding guitar player ever. The way he used to do the whammy bar — that vibrato bar. He kept his little finger on it. … He’d make it sound, like at the end of a chord, Wow-wow. We were the first ones to ever get recognized for doing anything like that.

“His style was unique. When you heard him play, you knew it was him.”