Bonnie Guitar

Best remembered as the wistful voice behind the 1957 pop smash “Dark Moon,” Bonnie Guitar co-established the influential Dolton imprint that introduced both the Fleetwoods and the Ventures to national audiences. She entered the world as Bonnie Buckingham in Seattle on March 25, 1923, took up guitar and songwriting while still a teenager, and spent much of the ensuing decade as a session player for Fabor Robinson’s Los Angeles operations—Fabor, Abbott, and Radio—thereby acquiring the surname that would define her career. During that period she contributed to recordings by Jim Reeves, Dorsey Burnette, Ned Miller, and the DeCastro Sisters, yet she longed to step forward as an artist in her own right. Although “Dark Moon” had originally been slated for Burnette, Guitar’s admiration for the song prompted her to surrender her royalty share so that Robinson would allow her to cut it herself. Released first on Fabor in 1956, her understated and affecting version was promptly picked up by Dot, where it climbed to number six by the spring of 1957. When the follow-up, “Mister Fire Eyes,” stalled at number 71, Robinson ended the arrangement, sending Guitar back to Seattle. There she partnered with appliance salesman Bob Reisdorff to launch Dolphin Records, soon rebranded Dolton. The fledgling company was conceived chiefly to showcase her own singles such as “Candy Apple Red” and “Born to Be With You,” yet its fortunes quickly shifted toward the Fleetwoods, a high-school trio from nearby Olympia who reached the summit of the national charts in 1959 with the enduring hits “Come Softly to Me” and “Mr. Blue.” Shortly after Dolton also welcomed the Ventures—who promptly delivered their landmark instrumental “Walk Don’t Run”—Guitar departed for a return engagement with Dot. Reoriented toward the country market, she cut a string of albums for the label throughout the mid-1960s that yielded the top-ten singles “I’m Living in Two Worlds,” “(You’ve Got Yourself) A Woman in Love,” and “I Believe in Love.” In 1969 she joined Buddy Killen for the successful duet “A Truer Love You’ll Never Find (Than Mine).” Though her visibility waned in the 1970s, she continued to record for Columbia and MCA, reappearing on the country charts for a final time in 1980 with “Honey on the Moon.” She signed with Tumbleweed in 1986 for the pair of albums Yesterday and Today and maintained an active performance schedule until retiring in 1996.