Latest / Takin’ A Walk Nashville / Exploring Nashville Music History: William Lee Golden and his Journey with the Oak Ridge Boys and Family Legacy in Music

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Exploring Nashville Music History: William Lee Golden and his Journey with the Oak Ridge Boys and Family Legacy in Music · Takin’ A Walk Nashville

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Taking a Walk Nashville.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: Hi, everyone, this is Sarah Harrelson, your host of Taking
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: a Walk Nashville, and today I am coming to you
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: live from Country Radio Seminar.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: The energy is high here and the history of this
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: genres everywhere you look.
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  Speaker 2: And today's guest with me as someone who truly needs
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: no introduction, but his list of accolades is a masterclass
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: in American music history. He's a member of the Grand
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Ole Opry, a Country Music Hall of Famer, and a
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: member of.
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  Speaker 1: The legendary Oakridge Boys.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: But he's also a photographer, author, and patriarch of the
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: musical dynasty with his family group, the Goldens.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: William, thank you so much for being on Taking a
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Walk in Nashville today. How are you.
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  Speaker 3: I'm doing great well.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Thank you for being here.
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  Speaker 2: You know you spend decades seeing the world through a
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: tour bus window. What was a specific moment or landscape
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: that first made you want to pick up a camera
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  Speaker 2: and start.
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  Speaker 1: Documenting these golden memories in your new.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: Book, Well, it was a I guess back in two
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: thousand and eight, I got my first digital camera my
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: wife at the time, and by young Sawn, they gave
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: me one a camera for Christmas sun Rud. Anyhow, that
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: was opened up a whole your world for us. I
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: was trying to paint, you know, learning how to paint,
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  Speaker 3: do landscape paintings, and I would use a camera to
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  Speaker 3: take shots of the landscapes that I loved across the country.
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  Speaker 3: And so I never liked any of my film shots
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  Speaker 3: that I made, or you know, you take them and
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  Speaker 3: didn't you have to get them developed, and when you
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: get them back, you didn't like any of them. So
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: that's kind of what I did for a long time.
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  Speaker 3: But then what I got a digital camera that opened
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  Speaker 3: up a whole in your world. I could see immediately
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  Speaker 3: what I was doing. And then I bought a computer
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  Speaker 3: actually to put all my photographs arms travel with. Instead
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: of sitting in a hotel room, I would maybe get
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  Speaker 3: one of the guys in the crew and one of
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  Speaker 3: the band members i'd like to take photographs. We'd get
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  Speaker 3: a car and go out somewhere to like if we
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  Speaker 3: was in Vegas, Retherid sit there and listen to slot
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  Speaker 3: machines all day. We'd go out to Red Rock Canyon,
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  Speaker 3: so about fifteen minutes outside of town, and it's a
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  Speaker 3: beautiful drive around Rock Canyon about fifteen mile, drive around
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  Speaker 3: that canyon and take photographs. And then one day we
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: may go north of there about forty five miles up
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  Speaker 3: to Savalley Fire, which is another beautiful landscape place to
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  Speaker 3: go take photographs. That's what I did instead of sitting
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: in a hotel room doing nothing and watching bad TV.
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: I would get out, go take photographs wherever we're at,
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  Speaker 3: bring them back home and show my little boy, you
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: know where I'd be and photos. So I was doing
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: an autobiography with Scott England back during the pandemic. I
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: actually did five major projects at the pandemic. After I've
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: turned off negative hate on television news, got my family
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  Speaker 3: together and we started reporting old songs, songs that had
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  Speaker 3: inspired us he individually, you know, throughout the years. I
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  Speaker 3: took them back to where it all started with me
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  Speaker 3: and we harmonized with these old songs that my sister
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  Speaker 3: and my mother told me when I was real little.
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  Speaker 3: So that's what we did as a family during the pandemic,
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  Speaker 3: and we went out and did several shows together with
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  Speaker 3: a family, and when the Oaks were not out on
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  Speaker 3: the road, I would go out and do shows with
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  Speaker 3: by kids.
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  Speaker 2: And grandkids, yeah, yeah, you mentioned all these projects you
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: did during the pandemic. Besides Golden Memories you mentioned you
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: have an autobiography. It's titled Behind the Beard, talking about
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: your career, your time with.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: The Oakridge Boys.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: How did you first get introduced to the members of
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  Speaker 2: the oak Ridge Boys formerly the Oakridge Quartet.
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  Speaker 3: Well, like I said, you know, I learned to play
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  Speaker 3: and sing when I was six and seven and eight
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  Speaker 3: years old, played with a guitar and singing harmonies with
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  Speaker 3: my sister, and she was a talented one in our familis.
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  Speaker 3: You could play any instruments she picked up or sit behind.
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  Speaker 3: Basically she plays piano, mandolin, the guitar. It was in
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  Speaker 3: high school and when I sang in my first quartet,
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  Speaker 3: I sang in the FFA Quartet Future Farmers of America,
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  Speaker 3: and that's when I fell out of love with four
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  Speaker 3: kart harmony singer. Then after school I got a trio together.
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  Speaker 3: It had a trio. I didn't have a good bass singer,
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  Speaker 3: so if you didn't have a good one, you didn't
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  Speaker 3: use one. But that's where I met the oapi Is Boys.
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  Speaker 3: Was doing concerts and open shows for different people, and
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  Speaker 3: they played at an all night singing. It was a
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: sundown to set up singing. They would have every year
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  Speaker 3: in Bonifay, Florida, and that's where I got to meet
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  Speaker 3: him and talk to him. And then in Mobile, Alabama,
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  Speaker 3: they were playing a stadium there and I got to
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  Speaker 3: talk to him. But I got to know them, and
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  Speaker 3: they made a change in the group. I didn't quite
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  Speaker 3: think that it fit the group, and I went to
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  Speaker 3: Nashville and talked to the guys. I knew they were
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: playing in Nashville that weekend, so I drove up from
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  Speaker 3: South Alabama to fought to him. I told them that
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  Speaker 3: I would like to try out to the group because
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  Speaker 3: they ever decided to make another change. A couple of
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  Speaker 3: months later, they called me and said, we're in the
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  Speaker 3: market for a Barretts. I'm a singer. He's still interested
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  Speaker 3: in try now. I said, yeah, So I drove on
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  Speaker 3: to Nashville from South Alabama and got to the Tennessee
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  Speaker 3: line of you hit a snow blizzard coming in. First
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  Speaker 3: time I'd ever driven in a blizzard. You know, growing
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  Speaker 3: up the South, we didn't see snow. So yeah, I
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  Speaker 3: drove through a blizzard to get up to their house
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  Speaker 3: and to the spey Gatlet's home and uh, and we
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  Speaker 3: tried out. We get a few songs and they said, man,
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  Speaker 3: we'd love to have you join our group. I said,
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  Speaker 3: well one do you want me to go? They said,
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  Speaker 3: well this weekend, So I said okay. So I had
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  Speaker 3: to drive back to South Alabama to repack my suitcase
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  Speaker 3: and fell back up and that's where it started. That's
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  Speaker 3: how I got rid over s born.
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  Speaker 2: Well, it was well worth it, and you still have
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  Speaker 2: many upcoming performances with them at the Grand Old Aubry.
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  Speaker 2: You recently did the American Made Christmas.
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  Speaker 1: Farewell toward Together.
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  Speaker 2: What's it like being on stage together after fifty years?
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  Speaker 3: Well, you know, Dwayne and I have been singing together
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  Speaker 3: for sixty years. This year. He joined sixty years ago.
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  Speaker 3: This year, about a month from now is when he joined.
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  Speaker 3: But I joined the year before Dwayne did. But we've
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  Speaker 3: been singing together, and it was we were together here
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  Speaker 3: almost ten years when Richard joined our group, and then
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  Speaker 3: when Joe joined the group in eighty three. Richard joined
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  Speaker 3: us in seventy two and Joe joined us in seventy three.
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  Speaker 3: So that particular lineup is the one that had all
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  Speaker 3: the big treachery hit Records, and we were together with
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  Speaker 3: that lineup for fifty years before Joe passed away two years.
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  Speaker 3: Joe and Richard's been struggling this whole past year with
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: pancreatic cancer, and so we've had another bass singer out
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  Speaker 3: with us. We've had two young bass singers out. They're incredible. Man,
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  Speaker 3: I've never heard nothing like He's young guys, but our
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  Speaker 3: young tenor that replaced Joe. He's been with us over
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  Speaker 3: two years now. I got grandkids older than Ben. James
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  Speaker 3: Tony Brown heard Ben saying two years ago and after
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: hearing insane, you walked up said, man, your brand new
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: generation with a Vince Gill voice. You got that high,
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  Speaker 3: alsome sound. He said. I've not heard another person of
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: that voice put Vince Gil in the past thirty five years.
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  Speaker 3: But Ben is he was in his late twenties when
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  Speaker 3: he joined us. We were in our twenties when we joiced.
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  Speaker 3: So I've been here sixty one years ago.
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  Speaker 2: Would I join well, even though the lineup has changed,
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  Speaker 2: is going to be so special performing together on stage,
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  Speaker 2: singing those songs. And as you mentioned earlier, you've been
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: busy performing and also recording with your family. The Goldens
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  Speaker 2: recently releasing a music video for Old Country Church.
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  Speaker 1: I love the video. The song is deep sentimental value.
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  Speaker 2: Reaching back to when you and your sister saying on
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  Speaker 2: your granddad's radio show, what does it feel like to
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  Speaker 2: now hear those same harmonies coming from your sons and
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  Speaker 2: your granddaughter?
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  Speaker 1: Now?
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  Speaker 3: Well, it's great math. Our granddaughter Elizabeth, she plays violin
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  Speaker 3: and she's also a great singer. And my grandson Eliza,
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: he just graduated Brown University and he's also a great singer.
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  Speaker 3: So being able to play years of your sing with
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: the owners, there's a real freel bad. It's there's a
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  Speaker 3: whole nother generation of our family, and so we go
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  Speaker 3: out play shows at Brufans is a family. We take
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  Speaker 3: three generations out with us. It's kind of like what
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  Speaker 3: the Oaks are now with our young singers Tenner sing,
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  Speaker 3: Ben James and then the young bass singer Aaron Lee
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  Speaker 3: mccinern is out with us. It's exciting to have these
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  Speaker 3: young kids come in of a brand new generation of
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  Speaker 3: singers that could help keep the Oakridge Boys going forward.
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  Speaker 3: None of us started the Oaprish Boys and started back
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  Speaker 3: in World War Two and Oakridge, Tennessee, you're in the
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  Speaker 3: development of Victoric Bah that's where they perform for all
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  Speaker 3: the scientists and engineers that were not allowed to leave.
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  Speaker 3: They were segwesterned there atge during their development. The Oakridge
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  Speaker 3: became their favorite group have in through the Oakridge Facility
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  Speaker 3: there to sing on the weekends and they would come
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  Speaker 3: every weekend. There's a theater in Opridge, Tennessee there through
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  Speaker 3: by the Atomic Energy Place where the Oaprish Foyers used
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  Speaker 3: to play. The original Oapris Quartet play there and that
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  Speaker 3: theater was basically to build for them to travil Clay.
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  Speaker 3: What's a week for the weekends? We go way back
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  Speaker 3: to there far as our name, but then he's one
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  Speaker 3: of us joined the brute, it was already going and
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  Speaker 3: uh so this configuration that we've had for fifty years
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  Speaker 3: was Dwayne and I and Richard Servant and Joe Bonzel.
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  Speaker 3: That's the ones that had all the big success for
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: record recording country music. We had our first country album
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  Speaker 3: and nineteen seventy seven with the y'all Come Back Saloon Owl.
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: Jim Halse who managed the Olkridge Boys, he still manages.
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  Speaker 3: He's in his nineties now. He was a top manager
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  Speaker 3: and rookie agent, and so he played a major part
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  Speaker 3: of us having the recording contracts to Reford Country Music
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: and if he put all those contracts together for us
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: and helped book card dates for years. But Jim Haws
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  Speaker 3: was one of major players and helped us. He was
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: a man that opened the door to get us on
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  Speaker 3: network television. For years and years, he was a topic
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: getting people on TV. He had an LA office for
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: the TV agent that run his office out there. Dick
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: Cowards was a guy that brought his Hollywood office out there,
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  Speaker 3: but he also had a Tulsa office. Jim managed Roy
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  Speaker 3: Clark throughout his whole career, and Belle Chillis and many Pearls.
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: Some of these people he managed. There's several of his
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: artists in the Hall of Fames. But he was a
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  Speaker 3: top manager in country music book he worked with it.
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  Speaker 3: He's still up there with that Lee.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's such special history to mean too, because I'm
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  Speaker 2: from East Tennessee. You know, I have friends that work
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: at the Atomic Energy Planty twelve. So I love the
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: history and I love that. You know, all of your
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: family is very musical too, and on tick and Walk Nashville,
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: I love to give our listeners, various Nashville music history,
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: and a lot of people don't know that the song
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: el Vira was actually inspired by a street sign in
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: East Nashville when songwriter Dallas Frasier was looking for a
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: place to eat lunch.
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  Speaker 1: Elvira Avenue still exists. William take us back in time.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: What made the Oakridge boys want to cut this song
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: that Dallas Fraser wrote?
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: It was one of the publishers here with Tree Publishing,
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: was out in Texas one weekend and he heard a
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: band out there at a club play at El Viral.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: He come back, Joe ron Chancy, our record producer. He said, Man,
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: you know that song el Viral that Dallas Fraser wrote?
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: We said, do you old to cut the onfers year.
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: I was out in Texas this weekend. There was a
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: band playing that in a club out there. They said,
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: band they had the crowd going wild without old song. Uh.
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: Dallas had it on an album. It released it as
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: a single. Charlie Rich had the song on Behind Closed
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: Doors album, Rodney Crowd had it on an album. Kenny
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: Rodgers at the first Edition had it on Something's Burning Out.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: So they had all cut Elvira, but no one had
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: a bass saint. It was ron chanted idea for us
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: to let the tenor singers sing the lead on it,
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: a high voice singing the lead. And then he also
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: wanted to do it different than everybody else did since
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: we had a harmony group. He wanted the bass singer
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: to do the step out lines over the novel Cow
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: Cow and uh. So that's what we did with a song.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: First time we ever did it in concert was in Spokane, Washington.
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  Speaker 3: We rehearsed it for the band in the afternoon. We
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: dropped it in the middle of the show. We didn't
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: sof thing about it. We just dropped it in the
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: show and sang us, all it's the end of that.
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: That crowd exploded like I'd never heard. They went wild
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: and would not stop, kept on and off. We backed up,
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: said what do we do? Said sing it again. We
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: did it again. It was the same response. We wound
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: up singing it three times and it was the same response,
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: so we had to keep going on. Nothing got them
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: that exciting for the rest of the show, and at
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: the end of the show we threw it one more
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: time at him and it's still it was the same response.
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: Every time we did it. It happened the next night
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: in Seattle the same way, and the next night in Portland, Oregon,
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: it was the same thing. Right in the middle of
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: the show. It stopped the show. So we called the
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: record label on Monday and say, hey, we don't know
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: what you got in mind to release off this album,
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: but this is what's happening with a Salt Elvira out here,
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: so you might want to consider that. So they released
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: it to the top of the chart, said record time.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: It's spilled over at the Puff rock and roll.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely a crossoverhead that's so timeless, especially with
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: that based up outline. William, I have one more question
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: left for you today. Thank you again for being on
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: Taking a Walk Nashville. Looking back at your career walk
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: so far, what is the one piece of advice you
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: would get to someone who is taking their first steps
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: of their career in music city.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: Well, the main thing is following your visions and don't
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: be distracted. People will pull you one side or the other.
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: You know they'll pull you off from where you're headed,
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: but don't lose sight of your goals and your vision.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: Keep following your visions and just always remember a lot
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: of people quit. And there's one thing for sure, if
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: you ever fit, you know you won't make it, which
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: keep going. We went through all the negative. Everybody tell
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: us all you can't make it. We'd share our visions.
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: No one could see it but us, and so we
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: got with Jim Halsey. We shared our visions what we
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: could see. He could see it, but yet he could
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: see it even bigger. So that's who you want to
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: surround yourself, where there's people that are also vision errors,
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: people that can take your visions and propel them in
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: to be in much more than you could avy yourself.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: Now, that's such wonderful advice and so true.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: William, thank you again for being here today.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Taking a Walk in Nashville with
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Sarah Harrelson.
• 17:57
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• 18:02
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• 18:11
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