Sitting across a Zoom window from Joe Bonsall is a bit like staring at a living map of Nashville’s golden era. He’s got that Philly-born grit softened by decades of Tennessee sun, and even through a computer screen, the energy is twitchy and restless. We are ostensibly here to talk about the 40th anniversary of "Elvira," a song that didn't just top charts—it fundamentally altered the DNA of what a country-pop crossover could look like in the Reagan era.
But the real story isn't just the anniversary. It’s the sheer survival of The Oak Ridge Boys. While their peers from the 1980s have mostly retreated to the casino circuit or the hazy memories of CMT Gold, the Oaks are still grinding. They have a new Dave Cobb-produced record, *Front Porch Singin’*, slated for a June release, and Bonsall is acting as the group’s de facto historian.
"Elvira" remains the monolith. It’s the song that everyone knows, even if they don’t know they know it. It’s a 1981 earworm that feels like it was birthed in a lab for maximum stickiness. And yet, it wasn't even theirs to begin with. The track was a retread, a dusty 1966 relic from the pen of Dallas Frazier.
I asked Joe about the discovery of the track, noting my own surprise that it wasn't an Oak Ridge original. Bonsall didn't miss a beat.
"Well, you are correct," Bonsall says. "Rodney Crowell actually cut it years before we did. The writer, Dallas Fraser, had a regional hit with it in 1964. Kenny Rogers and The First Edition did a rendition of it and some weird minor key - it wasn’t a single but it was really weird."
The industry context here is vital. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the "song plugger" was the kingmaker of Music Row. These were the guys who lived in the pockets of producers, pitching demos like they were selling life insurance. For the Oaks, that man was Ronnie Gant of Acuff-Rose Music.
Bonsall recalls the *Fancy Free* sessions with the kind of clarity usually reserved for a first car or a first heartbreak. The band was already riding high on five gold albums. They were comfortable.
"What happened was, in 1980, we were working on our album called Fancy Free," Bonsall explains. "We’d already had five gold albums at that point and everything was going great. We had actually been touring with Kenny Rogers for a year and a half on the big 'Full House Tour'. We were just wrapping up working on Fancy Free when a song plugger from Acuff-Rose Music named Ronnie Gant came into the studio and said, 'Man, I just heard a bar band in Texas singing Dallas Fraser’s Elvira and I was thinking the Oak Ridge Boys could nail this thing to the wall. They never did anything like this. What do you think?' Our producer, Ron Chancey, said 'Hey boys, let’s give it a try'."
There is a lesson here for every over-produced, over-thought modern country track: sometimes, the first take is the only take that matters. The Oaks didn't agonize over the arrangement. They didn't have a boardroom meeting about "brand alignment." They just sang the damn song.
"So we went the studio and ran through it probably twice," Bonsall says. "I’ll be really honest with you, if you listen to me sing on those verses, I was just goofing around (sings) 'Eyes that look like heaven'. Just goofing. Then Richard with that remarkable voice put those 'Oom Papa Mow Mow’s' on there and became probably the most famous bass singer in the world. And the rest is history."
But history isn't made in the studio; it’s made on the asphalt. The Oaks took the track on a test run through the Pacific Northwest in early 1981. It was a litmus test that yielded an immediate, almost violent reaction from the crowd.
"Fancy Free album was in the can ready to be released," Bonsall notes. "And we went on a little tour in early 1981. And we put the song on stage a couple of times just to see how it went. People in the audience acted like we gave them a condo in Montserrat. I mean, the response was like, off the wall. I mean, standing up, yelling. We sang it three times."
That "condo in Montserrat" line is pure Bonsall. It captures the absurdity of the moment. One night in Spokane, Washington, the band realized the label was sitting on a nuclear weapon. They didn't wait for a marketing report. They called MCA Records from the road.
"One night in Spokane, Washington, we called MCA Record and told them we’ve got something going on out here - Man, you better release this," he says. "And they did. It became a number one country single. Between March and June, it sold 2,000 - 45’s back then right away, and then as we released Fancy Free as our second single from the album for the summer, it crossed over into the pop market. So all the way through the summer of ‘81, everybody in this country was singing Elvira with the Oak Ridge Boys. It was pretty cool."
There is a specific art to the cover song that often gets lost in the era of Spotify algorithms. It’s about more than just a different voice; it’s about a total sonic kidnapping. The Oaks didn't just cover "Elvira." They stole its soul and gave it a new one.
"Well, in a way, I never felt like we were singing somebody else’s song," Bonsall insists. "I just went in there and had fun with it. I didn’t even sing it like anybody else did. If you listen to some of the originals, they do things on some of the original cuts of the song that we did not do. Especially like with Richard singing 'Oom Papa Mow Mow' and me the way I did the verse. So we actually did make it our own song, I think."
And it wasn't a fluke. The Oaks have always been genre-agnostic when the spirit moves them. This is the same group that took a Jack White riff and turned it into a bluegrass-adjacent stomp.
"We have very rarely done covers, if you want to call them that," he adds. "We’ve done some and always been open minded to anything creatively. We’re the group that recorded Seven Nation Army a few years ago, so we’ll do anything. But Elvira was just one of those things. It’s like the old question, how big can a song get? Boy you won’t believe how big one could get. And everybody in the world wishes they had an Elvira? I wish we had another one."
The magic, if you can call it that, comes from the lack of pretension. They weren't trying to record "Bridge Over Troubled Water." They were trying to record a party.
What happened was, in 1980, we were working on our album called Fancy Free. A song plugger from Acuff-Rose Music named Ronnie Gant came into the studio and said, “Man, I just heard a bar band in Texas singing Dallas Fraser’s Elvira and I was thinking the Oak Ridge Boys could nail this thing to the wall. They never did anything like this. What do you think?” Our producer, Ron Chancey, said “Hey boys, let’s give it a try”.
"I gotta tell you, I didn’t think we were doing somebody else’s song," Bonsall says. "I had never heard Rodney Crowell’s version. I heard Kenny Rogers and their First Edition version on an album, because I was a big Kenny Rogers fan. So I mean, I’d heard it, but I just didn’t feel like we were doing somebody else’s song to be honest with you. I just never felt that way. Ron said, Joe, I think he should sing the verses. And I think Richard, you do the 'Oom Papa Mow Mow', really make it different and come up with a cool arrangement and we just recorded it. It wasn’t like we were re-recording Bridge Over Troubled Water either. You know what I mean? It was Elvira. Just a fun song and we approached it with a fun attitude. And I think that’s how it comes off even 40 years later."
Even now, decades removed from the neon-soaked charts of the early 80s, the song functions as a secular hymn. It’s the moment in the set where the audience loses its collective mind.
"The song is amazing," Bonsall says with a grin. "Even now, the Oak Ridge Boys on stage, we’ll go Alright, let’s sing Elvira, and the people stand up like it’s the Hallelujah chorus. They stand and sing it with us. It’s just an incredible phenomenon that only comes along once in a lifetime."
The crossover success of "Elvira" wasn't just about the music. It was about the faces. Thanks to the relentless TV schedule of the era—*The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson* being the ultimate gatekeeper—the Oaks became household names.
"Well, again, it became so big and I think one of the keys to our early success of it was the fact that people not only loved the song, but they knew it was us singing it," Bonsall explains. "And that’s a big deal. I mean, people knew it was the Oak Ridge Boys. Thanks to Johnny Carson and the Tonight Show, and quite a few other shows we were on, people knew it was us singing Elvira. To this day, we can walk through an airport and people go 'Hey, man, Elvira - Oom Papa Mow Mow, Heigh-ho silver'. People know the Oak Ridge Boys and Elvira, they put it together."
But Bonsall is quick to defend the band’s broader legacy. They aren't a one-hit wonder, even if that one hit is a giant.
"We’ve had over 35 charted hit records beside that and we’re in the Country Music Hall of Fame," he says firmly. "Elvira didn’t put us in the Country Music Hall of Fame, our body of work did. But Elvira’s the song that people want to hear from the Oak Ridge Boys, and it’s the song they identify with. Count your blessings, man, I’ll sing Elvira probably, I’m sure until the day I die."
The road is where these stories live. Bonsall remembers that first night in Spokane with a clarity that suggests he could probably tell you what the catering looked like.
"Yes. Spokane, Washington at the Spokane Opera House," he says when asked about the debut performance. "I said that night on stage, we’ve just come out of the studio recording a new album and we’d like to do a few new songs for you. And we did a couple of the songs and they went over really well. Then we did Elvira and it went over like, Whoa. We knew right then that we had something going on. Then the next night was Portland, Oregon. Same thing happened. The next night was Eugene, Oregon. Same thing happened. That’s when we called the record label and said better release this thing, man, something’s going on here."
Bonsall isn't just a singer; he’s a writer. He has chronicled the band’s journey across multiple books, acting as the memory bank for a group that has seen it all.
"Well, I’ve written two books on the Oak Ridge Boys - one called 'An American Journey: Over 30 Years on the Road to Memories, Music and Legend' and one called 'On the Road with The Oak Ridge Boys: Forty Years of Untold Stories and Adventures by Joseph S. Bonsall', which is my writing name," he notes. "I just finished a semi-autobiography / semi Oak Ridge Boy book called 'I See Myself'. It’ll probably come out around Christmas, if not next year. I just now finished the book. So yeah, man, I keep kind of a running history in my head of everything we’ve done. It’s, I’m pretty adept at it."
The new book, *I See Myself*, promises to bridge the gap between his Philadelphia roots and his Nashville reality.
"Well, we can expect to hear how a Philly boy became an Oak Ridge Boy," Bonsall says. "And I keep reflecting back and forth between growing up and early singing days; back and forth to what the Oak Ridge Boys are doing and have done. And so it’s a quasi autobiography, a quasi Oak Ridge Boy book."
Despite the various iterations of "Elvira" recorded over the years—including some experimental detours—Bonsall remains a purist.
"I’ve got to go with the original to be honest," he admits. "We’ve cut it with different people, we’ve cut some different things. We cut it real Dixieland once with a Dixieland band, and a Dixieland approach to - it was really kind of fun, to be honest. We’ve cut it live a few times too, and they’re exciting, but that original cut, I don’t know, man, it was just some kind of magic to it. Can’t deny it."
The new project, *Front Porch Singin’*, represents a return to form, guided by the steady hand of Dave Cobb. Cobb is the industry’s current "it" producer, known for stripping away the Nashville gloss to find the grit underneath.
"Well, you know, we’ve managed to capture a lot of magic over the years," Bonsall says. "We have a new album coming out in June, called 'Front Port Singin', and we went into the studio even during this pandemic in August with one of the great producers in town now, the young Dave Cobb. This is actually the fourth album he’s produced for us. Dave had us singing like we’re sitting on our front porch like I’m doing right now. I’m sitting on the front porch."
The concept is simple: four men, four harmonies, no frills.
"The whole attitude of this new album is Oak Ridge Boys singing old gospel songs, old country songs, new gospel songs, new country songs as if the four of us were just sitting on the front porch at home singing harmony, and the album came out really, really good and with some of the songs and the way they’re written and the way they’re performed, I think we inadvertently might have recorded the perfect album for the time. I can’t wait for everyone to hear it. It comes out in June. And it’s called 'Front Port Singin'."
Gospel remains the bedrock of the group. Even when they were dominating the pop charts, the soul of the band was rooted in the church.
"Well, we don’t make our living singing gospel music, but we love gospel music," Bonsall says with conviction. "All our guys are Christian men. We believe in the saving power of Jesus Christ and we’re not afraid to get out there and say that, and we’re in the Gospel Music Hall of Fame as well as the Country Music Hall of Fame because the Oak Ridge Boys have put a lot of stones on the mountain of gospel music. It’s our roots. It’s our heritage. And you can’t come to an Oak Ridge Boys show and not hear a whole lot of hits. You’ll hear Elvira, Bobbie Sue, Thank God for Kids, Sail Away, on and on and on. But you’re going to hear a little gospel too. And the gospel always comes from our hearts and I think it moves people."
Bonsall’s journey into the band was that of a fan who became a peer. He spent years in the trenches with The Keystones, working the Northern circuit, including stops in Southern Ontario.
"Everything," he says of what he knew before joining. "I was a big fan of the Oak Ridge Boys long before I joined the group. I go into that in pretty good detail, in 'I See Myself' on a very magical night when my little singing group that I had at the time called The Keystones opened for the Oak Ridge Boys in Wilmington, Delaware, and we became friends immediately. Dwayne Allen loved my group. He produced 10 albums for The Keystone group. We were working out of Buffalo, New York at the time and The Keystones did a lot of singing up there in Ontario."
The connection to the region is deep. Bonsall wasn't just a singer; he was a promoter, bringing the Oaks to places like Sarnia and Southern Ontario long before he wore the jersey.
"William Lee Golden started booking The Keystones down south and I would bring the Oak Ridge Boys up north," he recalls. "I promoted Oak Ridge Boys shows all over New York State, Pennsylvania, Southern Ontario. I remember Sarnia for instance, I promoted the Oak Ridge Boys there. Through all those years, we just became really good friends and creative partners so to speak. Then my good friend Richard, who I sang with for six years, went with J.D. Sumner & The Stamps, and 1971 backed up Elvis Presley till October 1972 - then joined the Oak Ridge Boys of all things. A year later, when an opening came in the group when their tenor guy left, they offered me the job and so I think I’ve written this before, but you can take 10,000 guys and line them up, keep pulling four out of there and put them behind a microphone and you’re not going to get an Oak Ridge voice. There’s a lot of water under a lot of dams here."
The longevity of the lineup is a statistical anomaly in the music business.
"Well, I think it is," Bonsall says of the magic. "William Lee Golden first joined this group in 1965, Dwayne Allen in ‘66, Richard in October ‘72 and me in October ‘73. I was 25 years old and I’m about to turn 73, and I’m still one of the Oak Ridge Boys. That’s magic."
Vocally, the group remains remarkably intact. While some of the falsetto might have softened, the power is still there. Bonsall credits a higher power and a bit of common sense.
"That’s a blessing from God, I have to give him the honour and the praise on that," he says. "I’ve heard a lot of older people sing and they just kind of lose some of it. But then I’ve heard a lot of older people sing that don’t lose any of it. Remember, Ray Price? Price was close to 90 years old and he was right on it. Right? Well, I’m very fortunate that I can still sing my part, without any trouble. There’s a few little things in my voice that maybe aren’t there anymore. You remember a song we had back in ‘85 called 'Little Things', (sings) 'it’s away, you kiss me', I can’t get up and do that no more. There’s power in my voice, but some of that falsetto may be gone. But the power in it. (Sings Elvira), is there, I mean, it’s there. And my guys are the same way."
The critique here is honest: the high-flying acrobatics of the 80s have been traded for a more grounded, resonant strength.
"Dwayne Allen is one of the finest singers ever to sing a song and he’s still right on it," Bonsall continues. "Golden has this countrified attitude and his voice, and it’s strong man - Golden’s 82 years old and he is strong. I want to be him when I grow up. Richard, what a unique talent, he sings bass like nobody else has one of those. And he hasn’t lost the thing either. So we’re very fortunate that we can all still sing, and I don’t do anything special. I, certainly tried to get a good night’s sleep. I tried to take care of myself physically and mentally. I think we all do, and that’s why we can still sing at a very high level."
The pandemic was a forced pause for a group that has spent 50 years on the move. But even in the quiet, the drive hasn't dissipated.
"Well, there’s just no quitting in the Oak Ridge Boys, there ain’t one guy in this group that goes, Well, you know what, Maybe we’re done? No, it’s always moving forward," Bonsall says. "I heard Dwayne Allen say something the other day and I tweeted this at @oakridgeboys. He said, 'You know, man, I have found over the last year and a half that I can be home a lot, and I can be happy at home'. And I think we can all say the same thing. I’ve enjoyed being home. I’ve enjoyed my farm, enjoyed my wife, my cats, it’s been fine. I haven’t felt weird like we all have because it has been a weird time. But I haven’t minded being home."
But the stage is a siren song. For a group like the Oaks, the connection with a live audience isn't just a job; it’s a necessity.
"But as Dwayne said the other day, 'There’s still a hole in my heart that’s only filled by going out there on stage and singing to people and bringing love and encouragement to that stage and then have it come back to you. That fills the hole and it tells me we’re not through yet. We have a lot more to do'. I feel the same way.
