William Lee Golden recalls Oak Ridge Boys debut 60 years ago & returning to gospel to overcome grief
By: Ian Saint
In the 6 decades since William Lee Golden made his recording debut with The Sensational Oak Ridge Boys, he has enjoyed collaborating with everyone from Patti LaBelle to a puma (for real; more on that later).
The Oak Ridge Boys are a shining example of crossover success among multiple genres, too. They are inducted to both the Country Music Hall of Fame and Gospel Music Hall of Fame; and they soared to the Top 5 of Billboard’s Hot 100 pop singles chart with “Elvira” in 1981 — precluding three more Hot 100 entries over the next couple years.
Golden’s path to stardom was far from immediate or easy, however; and his image on the cover of that 1965 gospel record bears the antithesis of the long-haired, long-bearded “mountain man” likeness he’s famous for. The Oak Ridge Boys’ first country music album, 1977’s Y’all Come Back Saloon, arrived 12 years later; and Golden was 42 by the time they first appeared on the pop chart. 86 years old today, he still tours heavily between the Oak Ridge Boys and his family band, William Lee Golden & The Goldens.
The luster of being a traveling crooner for a living didn’t always translate into harmony at home, either, and Golden has been candid about bearing the tolls of three divorces — the first of which followed a shocking showdown, that astonishingly mirrored the narrative of William Lee’s first #1 country hit as a lead singer, “Trying to Love Two Women.” (We’ll talk about that, too.)
Golden also divorced from the Oak Ridge Boys for 8 years, from 1987 to 1995. The personal significance of the group’s reconciliation and reunion with Golden might be felt stronger than ever today, as the Oak Ridge Boys weathered the loss of their tenor singer, Joe Bonsall, last year — mere days after Golden lost his oldest son, William “Rusty” Golden. Just a few months prior, Oaks primary lead singer Duane Allen lost his wife of 55 years, longtime Grand Ole Opry band background vocalist Norah Lee Allen.
Despite the flurry of devastating personal losses last year, the Oak Ridge Boys managed to record and release a new album in October. Mama’s Boys, out on Lightning Rod Records via Thirty Tigers, is a loose concept album that honors mothers; and it includes a collaboration with Texas’ own Willie Nelson. The album’s creation and release through the Oaks’ personal setbacks is a triumph in one sense; but according to Golden, it was essential to rebound from those profound losses — and it seems the latest example of a career marked by persisting through challenging periods through banding together in song. The accompanying tour also finds the Oak Ridge Boys dedicating a section of the show to their gospel music origins.
William Lee Golden spoke to Buddy Magazine ahead of several Texas shows:
- August 1 — Abilene — Paramount Theatre
- October 3 — Cedar Park — Haute Spot
- October 4 — Gail — Coyote Country Store
- November 30 — Houston — Arena Theatre
- January 21 — Dallas — The Kessler
- January 22 — Greenville — Greenville Municipal Auditorium
- January 23 — Corsicana — Palace Theatre
- January 24 — Brenham — Barnhill Center at Historic Simon Theatre
Although Golden hails from Alabama, he has several close ties to many regions of Texas. His longest Oak Ridge Boys partner, Duane Allen, is an East Texas native; his wife, Simone, raised her daughter in West Texas; and his youngest son, Solomon, attends medical school in Central Texas.
I chatted with Golden about his ties and tour dates across the Lone Star State, in addition to his storied career, over the phone last week. A transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below. For perspectives from other Oak Ridge Boys, check out my Grand Ole Opry backstage conversation with the late Joe Bonsall and my interview with bass singer Richard Sterban for NPR Ohio affiliate WOUB Public Media.
IAN SAINT: Good morning from Hollywood. I was just browsing Oak Ridge Boys vinyl at The Record Parlour on Selma Avenue, and I was so struck by the cover for 1985’s Step On Out album. Is that a real puma y’all have on a leash?
WILLIAM LEE GOLDEN: It is, yeah. That’s a puma — a real mountain lion.
What’s your memory of that shoot? I’m dying to know. [laugh]
Well, it was interesting. The animal was calm; but it was certainly cautious, too. You know, you’ve got to respect animals — respect their space, and communicate with them on a peaceful note. It was a very well-behaved animal; you can tell that the caretaker certainly had a lot of affection, too. For the great cover photograph, he was walking back to the handler. [laugh]
Wow. The record store also has a copy of what I believe is your first album in the group, The Sensational Oak Ridge Boys from Nashville, Tennessee, released in 1965 — which, sadly, isn’t available on streaming services. And there isn’t a whisker of facial hair on anybody, so I wasn’t 100% certain of which one is you? [laugh]
[speculating over the phone] I might be the one on the left. I remember that picture well. It was in front of an old cabin, close to Radnor Lake near Nashville. We recorded that album at Starday-King Sound Studios, on Dickerson Road in northern Nashville. Man, it doesn’t seem like that long ago — but we’re talking about 60 years ago! That was the first album I did with the Oak Ridge Boys. We did two albums that year; one for Starday Records, and another one for Skylite Records.
[Editor’s note: Starday-King Sound Studios was demolished in 2022. It had hosted sessions by artists ranging from Dottie West to Jimi Hendrix.]
I took a picture of that album next to Step On Out, just to juxtapose your transformation across 20 years. It’s truly remarkable to see the wide contrasts between your depictions, and yet they’re both authentically you.
[laugh] Well, that first cover was when I’d first come to Nashville — before I lost my razor.
But it’s been a wonderful journey. When you meet so many wonderful people along the way, that’s what makes the journey. I joined the Oak Ridge Boys in 1965, and our lead singer Duane Allen joined the very next year. For the past 60 years, he’s been the backbone of the group — the lead singer, and working closely with the record producers. He studied music in college, knowing choral and orchestral arrangements.
Yes, he graduated from East Texas State University — now named Texas A&M University Commerce.
Yeah, and he’s from Texas — a little community in northeast Texas, close to Paris, named Cunningham. There’s a bridge up there with his name on it.
Duane has been the anchor of the group, carrying a heavy load as a lead singer; but he’s a great harmony singer when another guy sings lead, too. It’s good to have a partner for that long. He and I have been together through a lot of things, including long before Richard joined in 1972 and Joe in 1973.
Then you guys pivoted from gospel music to country music.
We signed with our manager, Jim Halsey, in 1974. He was managing Roy Clark, Mel Tillis, Minnie Pearl, and a lot of the day’s top country acts. Jim is the one that got us to record our first country album, Y’all Come Back Saloon, released on ABC Records in 1977.
Thank God, we had enough success to where we could keep doing what it is that we love to do most — get together and harmonize together. It’s still as cool a feeling today as it was when we started. It’s exciting every day, and we never take another day to do what we love for granted. Getting together and being lifted up by the songs makes me forget how old I am.
You sing the lead vocal on Trying to Love Two Women, which is my favorite Oak Ridge Boys song to sing along to. The way you croon “sometimes the pleasure ain’t worth the strain” makes me smile every time. That song was written by Sonny Throckmorten, who also co-wrote my favorite Judds song, “Why Not Me.” What is your memory of being presented that song, and the decision to have you sing lead rather than Duane?
Sonny Throckmorton is a great songwriter and great friend. He also wrote “I Wish You Could Have Turned My Head (And Left My Heart Alone)” [which reached #2 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart in 1982].
[Producer] Ron Chancey brought us “Trying to Love Two Women,” and he knew that I’d tried to love two women myself. [laugh] I had a wife and a girlfriend. That’s all in the autobiography that I wrote during the pandemic. I told my co-writer Scot England that he was welcome to talk to anyone in my life, to get their side of the story. He talked to my first wife; she went into detail about me being unfaithful, how she got together with my girlfriend, and they surprised me when I came home from the road. They sat me down, and wanted to know which woman did I love.
[gasp] Oh, my gosh…
I was living that life when Ron Chancey wanted me to sing that song, so there was a reason why I sang “Trying to Love Two Women” with the feeling that I had. [laugh]
It does sound sincere! [laugh]
It was sincere! You know, you’re honest with them and tell them that you love both, but that’s not what they want to hear — and you wind up by yourself again. “Sometimes the pleasure ain’t worth the pain.” Yeah, it’s a song that kind of hits home to me.
But I’m with my beautiful fourth wife, Simone, and we’re about to celebrate 10 years together. Her mother was originally from Amarillo. She was born in San Jose, and that’s where I met her; but when she was about 20 years old, her mother moved back to Amarillo, where she was born and raised — so Simone moved to Amarillo with her, and she raised her daughter there.
Happy 10th anniversary! How cool that she was a longtime Texan, too. Speaking of women in Texas… When I interviewed Joe Bonsall, he told me that the idea of the Oak Ridge Boys covering “Elvira” sprang from Don Gant of Acuff-Rose Music publishing company hearing a bar band in Texas playing Rodney Crowell’s arrangement of “Elvira” — of course, Rodney is from Texas — and he thought it could be a big hit. What’s your memory of “Elvira” taking off for y’all?
Ron Chancey, our record producer, brought the song down to the session for our new album. The song was 16 years old by then, so we’d all heard it. Dallas Frazier wrote the song, and it was the title track for his first album. I remember hearing Kenny Rogers & The First Edition do it on their [1970] Something’s Burning album. Ron Chancey wanted Joe to take the lead vocal to a higher range, and Richard making the “oom papa mow-mow” stand out [in a very low range] — that set our version apart. It was such a fun recording.
We got on the road and decided to rehearse “Elvira” with the band at sound check in Spokane, Washington. Then we dropped it in the middle of the show — didn’t say anything about it, just sang the song. At the end, I’ve never heard a crowd go so wild and explode into enthusiasm; their entire arena’s cheering would not stop. We look at each other and ask, “What do we do here? Because the next song wasn’t going to do that.” [laugh] So we said, “Let’s sing it again!” We sang it again, and the exact same thing happened; the crowd kept on and on, and we sang it three times. For the rest of the show, nothing got them up to that point again; so after we did the last song we’d planned, we did “Elvira” again and the place exploded.
We did that again the next night in Seattle, with the same thing happening. And the following night — on a Sunday night — we did it in Portland, and it was the same thing happening. Completely different crowds going wild, dropping it in the middle of the show unexpectedly. We called the record label and said, “This is what’s happening with ‘Elvira’ on the road, without [introduction]. You might want to think about releasing it as a single, as it may have the same effect on radio.” Sure enough, it did. It went to the top of the country music charts, and spilled right over to the Top 5 pop chart. That summer in 1981, every radio station in America was playing “Elvira” by the Oak Ridge Boys. It’s a singalong song — that’s what the Oak Ridge Boys are about, singalong songs where people can sing the choruses together.
Right before “Elvira” broke a country music single sales record, you embarked on what Joe told me was country music’s first nationwide arena tour — supporting Kenny Rogers and Dottie West in 1979.
Yeah, that was the Full House Tour. At that time, we’d had [several Top 5 country singles] under our belts. Dottie West would normally open, we would sing, and then Kenny would come on. We did around 200 dates with Kenny Rogers and Dottie West; every big arena in America. Then “Elvira” came a couple years later, and we were back in those same arenas as headliners; we had opening acts like the Bellamy Brothers.
That’s amazing. Speaking of epic collaborations, I was struck by the Oak Ridge Boys’ collaboration with Joe Walsh and Patti LaBelle a few years later, “Rainbow at Midnight.” That’s a whole lot of genre crossover. As I understand it, you arranged that unexpected ensemble?
I felt that they would fit great in that song. I love Joel Walsh’s slide guitar playing. I met him in Memphis, when we were all doing some music down there together; we have some mutual friends, like Booker T. Jones, and Joe came to stay at my house for three days. Another friend of mine mentioned knowing people with Patti LaBelle, and how it would be great for her to help us sing that song because of her capabilities and feel in music. So I went up to their studio, and they put her vocals on it; and man, I was amazed at how it just flowed out of her — like a waterfall yodel. Getting to play with people like that in your life, when you look up to their vocal abilities and respect them so much — it was the same thing with us getting to record with Ray Charles, George Jones, and Kenny Rogers — those are special moments, [especially when] you’re able to cross genres and it’s good. Good music is good, regardless of what genre it falls under.
Tell us about your new album, Mama’s Boys, out on Lightning Rod Records via Thirty Tigers. I know y’all wanted Joe to sing on it, but he insisted that you carry on with Ben James instead.
To still be singing together… [pause] The last five albums the Oak Ridge Boys have done were produced by Dave Cobb, who produces Chris Stapleton. He gets these young songwriters, that write today’s hit records. Mama’s Boys has young Ben James [filling in for Joe Bonsall]. He’s 28 years old — I’ve got grandkids older than him. He’s brought a whole new energy and life to the Oak Ridge Boys.
Losing Joe was heart-wrenching; but sometimes in the darkest days, God puts a rainbow in the sky. Joe called Ben — he had sung with him before, at a show with Dailey & Vincent, whom Ben was with before. Joe called Ben and said “Man, get on your singing britches. The guys need you, and I can’t go any further.” We never had a rehearsal with him before he joined our show, and he never missed a lick on all the songs.
Tony Brown — longtime producer for George Strait, Reba, and Vince Gill [and about to be inducted to the Country Music Hall of Fame] — heard Ben James sing, walked up to him, and said “Man, you’re the brand new generation with a Vince Gill voice. You’ve got that high, lonesome sound; and I’ve not heard a voice like that in 35 years, since Vince Gill.” That’s a high compliment.
Tony Brown produced “Fancy” for Reba. When we interviewed Reba on the ACM Awards red carpet, she said that she’s always wanted to meet Bobbie Gentry — who wrote “Fancy” — but has never been able to get ahold of her. I asked Joe if he ever met Bobbie before she inexplicably vanished from public in 1982, and he said he hadn’t. You’ve been with the Oaks for longer. Did you ever meet Bobbie?
I don’t think I did. She’s elusive. [By contrast] a lot of our avid fans have become more than fans; they become friends — you get to know their families, and they get to know ours. We follow some of them on social media; the Oak Ridge Boys are on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. My wife likes TikTok. I also do Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter myself. I like to post photographs of where I’m at — in fact, I’m getting ready to do a whole book about photography of beautiful settings and landscapes on tour, that’s coming out in the fall.
Very cool! We just did a cover story with The Police guitarist Andy Summers, who’s released photography books of his travels. Speaking of visuals, you sing the lead vocal in the Oak Ridge Boys’ new music video, “Come On Home.”
Yeah, Ben James is playing the boy leaving home. He remembers his Mama crying, and he calls her from a truck stop in LA. They get to talk, and she’s telling him to “come on home if you’re hurting,” “the front door’s always open and the lights are always on.” It’s a great, touching song [that fits the concept of] last year’s Mama’s Boysalbum, produced by Dave Cobb, out on Lightning Rod Records — they’re part of the Thirty Tigers umbrella in Nashville.
I was so touched by your performance at Thirty Tigers’ Gospel Brunch during last year’s Americanafest. When Duane recapped all the devastating losses that y’all endured that year, and how the power of music compelled you to still show up and sing, we could’ve heard a pin drop.
Music has a healing power. We’ve experienced that ourselves, after last year’s losses that we all went through with Joe. Duane lost his beautiful wife, and I lost my oldest son [Rusty Golden].
Ah, I’m very sorry…
It’s been the music that’s lifted us out of the valley of sorrow. It’s healing — mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. The only real healing that we found is through harmonizing together. It takes us away from that [grief], and lifts us up to the higher planes; we forget about everything else, when we get caught up in the moment of playing music and singing.
I interviewed Wynonna during The Judds’ Final Tour, that she completed after her mom’s devastating suicide; and she said that people singing along to their music is what saved her.
It is. We as singers, on nights like that, are getting more out of everything than anybody else is, because it’s lifting our spirits more than anyone else’s — at least, that’s what it seems like. But you know that there’s other people in the audience who are going through just as serious of losses as we are. They understand your feelings. And you feel the spirits of your loved ones, especially when you’re singing the gospel songs.
The Oak Ridge Boys have added a section of 3-4 gospel songs to the end of our show this year, going back to where we come from. Singing gospel music is our foundation, and that’s how we all got together. Some of us are farm boys. Duane grew up on a farm in northeast Texas, and I grew up on a cotton and peanut farm in the far south of Alabama. I still go back home, and sleep in my same bedroom that I grew up sleeping in. It’s a different bed, though. [laugh]
“Come On Home,” indeed.
Yeah, man; I treasure that. In fact, I’m going back soon. My sister is having a birthday, and she’s the one that taught me how to play a guitar and sing when I was six, seven, eight years old. We had a little duet — she plays mandolin, guitar, and piano, and she’s a great singer. We’d play guitar and sing duets of old country and gospel songs. I sang in my first quartet in high school, the Future Farmers of America quartet, competing with other school chapters; and I fell in love with four-part harmony singing. That’s what I’ve been doing all my life: harmonizing with great singers.
That’s wonderful. We look forward to you continuing that long tradition of harmonizing with great singers in Texas.
It’s been almost 10 years since the Oak Ridge Boys played Abilene, and we’re excited to be coming back. My youngest son, Solomon, is in medical school down in Texas; learning to be a practitioner in Austin, doing emergency surgery and things like that. He’s 23 years old, and about to have a birthday.
This story has been updated to include The Oak Ridge Boys’ January, 2026 show announcements in January. Below is a TV broadcast of the Oak Ridge Boys performing at Reunion Arena in Dallas, alongside the Gatling Brothers, in 1981. For the Oak Ridge Boys’ tour itinerary and tickets, visit https://www.oakridgeboys.com/tour.
