All this depends totally on your taste, of course, and there are some that are kind of de rigueur, like "Theme From A Summer Place," which I think is still the only instrumental that ever wound up at #1 for the year. 

But here are a few that spring to mind for me, although some of them are from the later 60s.

MELLOW

Cast Your Fate To The Wind - Sounds Orchestral

Soulful Strut -Young Holt Unlimited

Keem-O-Sabe - Electric Indian

Alley Cat - Bent Fabric

UPBEAT

Truck Stop - Jerry "Piano" Smith

A Walk In The Black Forest - Horst Jankowski

Hawaii Five-0 - The Ventures

Java - Al Hirt

Edited - in keeping with the 2 to 3:

Gonna Fly Now - Theme from 'Rocky'
Exodus - Ferrante & Teicher
Classical Guitar - Mason Williams


 

Last edited by Little Rich (November 23, 2020 5:01 pm)

Asia Minor-Kokomo
Comin' In The Back Door-Baja Mirimba Band
Woodchopper's Ball-Willie Mitchell
The Big Heavy-Cosie Eggleston
Penetration-Pyramids
Hungry For Love-San Remo Golden Strings
Music To Watch Girls By-Bob Crewe Generation
Boogie Woogie-B Bumble & The Stingers
Sax Fifth Avenue-Johnny Beecher
Time-Dave Clark Five

My favorite instrumentals are quite varied and numerous non-chart releases.
1) Malibu Run/Room 304 -- Richie Allen...Same song, different albums
2) Song For Anna - Herb Ohta....Very sweet instrumental
3) The Long Ships -- Charles Albertine....Movie Theme
4) Guitar Twist -- Ventures....Big favorite of the troops when I was in Japan.
5) Torquay -- Fireballs....My contender as the first "surf guitar" instrumental....Was #1 in L.A.
6) Route 66 Theme -- Nelson Riddle....TV show theme
7) Plantation Boogie -- Lenny Dee....Yeah!
8) Smokie Pt. 2 -- Bill Black Combo....Ideal in the car.
9) Sally Go Round The Roses -- Les Brown  The big band cooks
10) Theme from The Magnificent Seven -- Al Caiola  The original movie theme
 

Cloud9 wrote:

Definitely several excellent choices that had slipped my mind, and several more that I was not familiar with..  Needless to say, it'll be very difficult to whittle down to just one CD. May have to make two, or three, or.....

One of the big surprises, and one I'd forgotten about was Cary's mention of "Coming In The Back Door" by the Baja Marimba Band.  Many years ago, when doing the sign-on morning show at CHAK up in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, I had to come through the building's back door to access the studio, and that was my sign-on theme. That very last note was timed to hit the 6:00 a.m. national network's CBC news. Great memory.

I don’t know if you clicked on the link I left, I just said Baja Marimba Band because there are so many that I like and have on The Best Of The Baja Marimba Band CD.   Only have a few songs by Brass Ring.
 
I wondered why you still do CDs, I’ve got everything ripped and on my cel phone.  I was a little reluctant to put up this link but if you don’t have one, this is worth it if you never make a call:
 
https://www.hsn.com/products/samsung-galaxy-a10e-583-32gb-tracfone-w1500-minutestext/9541031
 
It’s the one I have and I like it so well, I have a second being delivered today for a backup just in case mine gets dropped or goes bad.
 
It’s prepay so there’s no contract and everything still works if you don’t renew except for making calls, mobile data and texting.
 
You will need a micro SD card to go with it too.  If that van radio doesn’t have bluetooth, you might also want a Bluetooth speaker.
 
FULL DISCLOSURE:  I own stock in American Movil (Tracfone’s parent company) but this deal ain’t gonna help dividends any.
 

Last edited by Taz (October 29, 2020 3:14 pm)

There certainly haven't been much in the way of instrumental hits during the past 25 years, but I had found an article that mentioned three that have made the top 10 since 1996.
https://oldies.boardhost.com/viewtopic.php?pid=2237#p2237

Is this true? Was this instrumental really banned from the radio for being too raunchy or gang-related? Odd for something with no lyrics. 

Watch Link Wray Play a Downright Dirty Version of “Rumble,” the Only Instrumental to Be Banned on Radio (1974)

Here's the original, in case you've never heard it. Pretty amazing guitar work for 1958.

That sounded like it could be an interesting article to post here, so I did a search to see if it was available ... although often Globe articles are behind their paywall, I found that at least at this point this one isn't. 
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/article-while-topping-the-charts-with-the-ultimate-in-feel-good-music-herb/

I like all those choices, but I'm pretty sure The Good, The Bad and The Ugly was by Hugo Montenegro. Hugh Masekela was the trumpeter behind Grazing In The Grass, itself a great instrumental.

Last edited by aflem (November 23, 2020 12:44 am)