This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Taking a walk Nashville. Hi everyone, this is Sarah Harrelson, your host of Taking a Walk Nashville. And today I am coming to you live from country radio seminar. The energy is high here and the history of the genre is everywhere you look. And today's guest with me is someone who truly needs no introduction, but his list of accolades is a masterclass in American music history. He's a member of the Grand Ole Opry. A country music hall of famer and a member of the legendary Oak Ridge Boys. But he's also a photographer, author and patriarch of the musical dynasty with his family group, The Golden's. William, thank you so much for being on Taking a Walk Nashville today. How are you? I'm doing great. Well, thank you for being here. You know, you spent decades seeing the world through a tour bus window. What was a specific moment or landscape that first made you want to pick up a camera and start documenting these golden memories in your new book? Well, it was, I guess, back in 2008. I got my first digital camera. My wife at the time and my young son, they gave me one a camera for Christmas and anyhow, that was opened up a whole new world for us. I was trying to paint, you know, learning how to paint, do landscape paintings. And I would use a camera to take shots of landscapes that I love across the country. And so I never liked any of my film shots that I made. You know, you take them and then you have to get them developed. And when you get them back, you didn't like any of them. So that's kind of what I did for a long time. But then when I got the digital camera, it opened up a whole new world. I could see immediately what I was doing. And then I bought a computer actually to put on my photograph songs. But travel, instead of sitting in a hotel room, I would maybe get one of the guys in the crew and one of the band members that like to take photographs. We'd get a car and go out somewhere to like if was in Vegas, rather than sit there and listen to slot machines all day. We'd go out to Red Rock Canyon. It's about 15 minutes outside of town and it's a beautiful drive around Red Rock Canyon, about 15 mile drive around that canyon and take photographs. And then one day we may go north of there about 45 miles up to Shabali or Fire, which is another beautiful landscape place to go take photographs. But that's what I did. Instead of sitting in a hotel room doing nothing and watching bad TV, I would get out, go take photographs wherever we're at and bring them back home and show my little boy, you know, where I'd be on and photos. So I was doing an autobiography with Scott England back during the pandemic. I actually did five major projects in the pandemic after I turned off negative hate on television. Years ago, got my family together and we started reporting old songs. Songs that had inspired us individually, you know, as we're throughout the years, I took them back to where it all started with me and we harmonized with these old songs that my sister and my mother told me when I was real little. So that's what we did as a family during a pandemic and we went out and did several shows together with a family. And when the Oaks were not out on the road, I would go out and do shows with my kids and grandkids. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned all these projects you did during the pandemic, besides Golden Memories. You mentioned you have an autobiography. It's titled Behind the Beard. Talking about your career, your time with the Oak Ridge Boys. How did you first get introduced to the members of the Oak Ridge Boys, formerly the Oak Ridge Quartet? Well, like I said, you know, I learned to play and sing when I was six and seven and eight years old, play with a guitar and singing harmonies with my sister. And she was a talented one in our family. She could play any instrument she picked up or sit the high base. She plays piano, mandolin, the guitar. It was in high school when I sang in my first quartet. I sang in the FFA Quartet, Future Farmers of America. And that's when I fell in love with a four-carat harmony singer. Then after school, I got a trio together. I had a trio. I didn't have a good bass singer, so if you didn't have a good one, you didn't use one. And that's where I met the Oak Ridge Boys, was doing concerts and open shows for different people. And they played at an all night singing. It was a sundown to set up singing. They would have every year in Boniface, Florida. And that's where I got to meet them and talk to them. And then in Mobile, Alabama, they were playing a stadium there. And I got to talk to them. But I got to know them and they made a change in the group. I didn't quite think that it fit the group. And I went to Nashville and talked to the guys. I knew they were playing in Nashville that weekend. So I drove up from South Alabama to talk to them. I told them that I would like to try out to the group if they ever decided to make another change. A couple of months later, they called me and said, we're in the market for a baritone singer. You still interested in trying out? I said, yeah. So I drove on to Nashville from South Alabama and got to the Tennessee line. He had a snow blizzard coming in. First time I'd ever driven in a blizzard, you know, growing up the sounds. We didn't see snow. So, yeah, I drove through a blizzard to get up to their house and to to the Spiti Gatlin's home. And we tried out. We get a few songs and they said, man, we'd love to have you join our group. I said, well, when do you want me to go? They said, well, this weekend. So I said, OK, so I had to drive back to South Alabama and repack my suit case and come back up. And that's where it started. That's how I got really over this morning. Well, it was well worth it. And you still have many upcoming performances with them at the Grand Ole Opry. You recently did the American made Christmas farewell towards the White and White together. What's it like being on stage together after 50 years? Well, you know, the White and I have been singing together for 60 years this year. He joined 60 years ago this year. About a month from now was when he joined. And but I joined the year before the White and did. But we've been singing together. And it was we were together here almost 10 years when Richard joined our group. And then when Joe joined the group in 83, Richard joined us in 72. And Joe joined us in 73. So that particular line of is a one that had all the big treachery hit records. And we were together with that lineup for 50 years before Joe passed away. Two years ago. And Richard's been struggling this whole past year was pancreatic cancer. And so we've had another young bass singer out with us. We've had two young bass singers out. They're incredible, man. I've never heard nothing like he's young guys. But our young tenor that replaced Joe, he's been with us over two years now. I got grandkids older than Benjane. Tony Brown heard Benjane two years ago. And after hearing him saying you walked up, said, man, you're a brand new generation with a vent skill voice. You got that high lulce of sound. He said, I've not heard another person of that voice put vent skill in the past 35 years. But Ben is he was in his late 20s when he joined us. We were in our 20s when we joined. So I've been here 61 years ago when I joined. Well, even though the lineup has changed, it's got to be so special performing together on stage, singing those songs. And as you mentioned earlier, you've been busy performing and also recording with your family, the Golden's, recently releasing a music video for Old Country Church. I love the video. The song is deep sentimental value reaching back to when you and your sister sang on your granddad's radio show. What does it feel like to now hear those same harmonies coming from your sons and your granddaughter now? Well, it's great. My granddaughter Elizabeth, she plays violin and she's also a great singer. And my grandson, Eliza, he just graduated Brown University and he's also a great singer. So being able to play music or sing with them is a real thrill that it's there's a whole another generation of our family. And so when we go out to play shows and do feng as a family, we take three generations out with us. It's kind of like what the Oaks are now with our young singers, Tenor singer Ben James and then the young bass singer, Aaron Lee McCoon is out with us. It's exciting to have these young kids come in of a brand new generation of singers that could help keep the Oak Ridge boys going forward. None of us started the Oak Ridge boys and started back then World War Two and Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Here in the development of your tour of Bob is where they perform for all the scientists and engineers that were not allowed to leave. They were subwestern there at Oak Ridge during the development. The Oak Ridge became their favorite group have entered the Oak Ridge facility there to sing on the weekends. And they would come every weekend. There's a theater in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. They're everybody, a atomic energy place where the Oak Ridge boys used to play. They're original Oak Ridge quartet day there. And that theater was basically developed for them to drive a clay. What's the week or the weekends? We go way back to their for as our name, but then he's one of us. Joe Underbrook. It was already going and so this configuration that we had for 50 years was a Dwayne and I and Richard Sturbert and Joe Bonzo. That's the ones that had all the big success for record reporting country music. We had our first country album and 1977 with the Yalkensak Saloon. Now, Jim Halsey managed the Oak Ridge boys. He still manages, but he's in his nineties now. He was a top manager and rookie agent. And so he played a major part of us having the recording contracts to perform country music. And if he put all those contracts together for us and help work our dates for years, but Jim Halsey was the one major players and helped us. He was a man that opened the door to get us on network television for years and years. He was a top and get people on TV. He had an L.A. office for the TV agent that run his office out there. Dick Cowards was a guy that run his Hollywood office out there, but he also had a Tulsa office. Jim managed Roy Clark throughout his whole career and Bill Chilis and many pearls, some of these people he managed. There's several of his artists in the hall of fans, but he was a top manager and country music. He's still up there with that league. Yeah, it's such special history to me, too, because I'm from East Tennessee. You know, I have friends that work at the Atomic Energy Plant and Y-12. So I love the history and I love that, you know, all of your family is very musical, too. And on Tick and Walk Nashville, I love to give our listeners various Nashville music history. And a lot of people don't know that the song Elvira was actually inspired by a street sign in East Nashville when songwriter Dallas Frazier was looking for a place to eat lunch. Elvira Avenue still exists. William, take us back in time. What made the Oak Ridge Boys want to cut this song that Dallas Frazier wrote? It was one of the publishers here with three publishing was out in Texas one weekend and he heard a band out there at a club playing Elvira. He come back to Ron Chancey, our record producer, said, man, you know, that song Elvira that Dallas Frazier wrote? We said, you ought to cut that on the Elf Ridge. Yeah, they said I was out in Texas this weekend. There was a band playing that in a club out there at the said band. They had the crowd going wild with that old song. Dallas had it on an album. It released it as a single. Charlie Rich had the song on behind closed doors out. Rodney Crowe had it on an album. Kenny Rogers at the first edition had it on something's burning out. So they had all cut Elvira, but no one had a bass say. It was Ron Chancey's idea for us to let the tenor singer sing the lead on it. A high voice singing the lead. And then he also wanted to do it different than everybody else did. Since we have a harmony group, he wanted the bass singer to do the step out lines over the novel Cow Cow. And so that's what we did with the song. First time we ever did it in concert was in Spokane, Washington. We rehearsed it for the band in the afternoon. We dropped it in the middle of the show. We did self thing about it. We just dropped it in the show and sang the song. It's the end of that crowd exploded like I'd never heard it. They went wild and would not stop. Kept on and off. We backed up. So what do we do? So sing it again. We did it again. It was the same response. We wound up singing it three times and it was the same response. So we had to keep going on. Nothing got him that excited for the rest of the show. And at the end of the show, we threw it one more time at him. And it's still, it is the same response every time we did it. It happened the next night in Seattle the same way. And the next night in Portland, Oregon, it was the same thing. Right in the middle of the show, it stopped the show. So we call the record label on Monday and say, hey, we don't know what you've got in mind to release off the salvo. But this is what's happening with the song Elvira out here. So you might want to consider that. So they released it to the top of the charts and record time. It spilled over at the puff. Rock and roll. Yeah, it's definitely a crossover hit. That's so timeless, especially with that based up outline. William, I have one more question left for you today. Thank you again for being on, taking a walk, Nashville. Looking back at your career lock so far, what is the one piece of advice you would give to someone who is taking their first steps of their career and music city? Well, the main thing is following your visions and don't be distracted. People will pull you one side of the other. You know, they'll pull you off from where you're headed. But don't lose sight of your goals and your visions. Keep following your visions and just always remember a lot of people quit. And there's one thing for sure. If you ever quit, you know, you won't make it. But keep going. We went through all the negative. Everybody tell us, oh, you can't make it. We'd share our visions. No one could see it but us. Until we got with Jim Halsey. We shared our visions, what we could see. He could see it, but yet he could see it even bigger. So that's who you want to surround yourself with. There's people that are also visionaries, people that can take your vision and propel them in to be in much more than you could have by yourself. Now, that's such wonderful advice and so true. William, thank you again for being here today. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Take In A Walk Nashville with Sarah Harrelson. Please check out our other shows produced by Buzz Night Media Productions. Comedy Saved Me and Music Saved Me, hosted by Lynn Hoffman and Take In A Walk, hosted by yours truly Buzz Night. All shows are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and our part of the I Heart Podcast Network.
