‘Giddy up’ with the Oak Ridge Boys at this year’s Georgia Mountain Fair

The annual Georgia Mountain Fair is known for bringing big names in music to North Georgia, drawing crowds from several states. This year’s fair runs from Aug. 16 to Aug. 24 and the Oak Ridge Boys, Grammy winners and members of the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Gospel Music Hall of Fame, return to the Anderson Music Hall in Hiawassee, Ga. on Aug. 23.

The group has sold more than 41 million records in the course of its six-decade career and routinely performs up to 100 or more shows per year. Before the Oaks’ famous mustached tenor Joe Bonsall died in July after a long illness, he and members Duane Allen, William Lee Golden and Richard Sterban, now in their 80s, released the album Front Porch Singin’ , with Grammy-winning super producer from Georgia, Dave Cobb, at the helm. The quartet is now in the midst of a farewell tour with 28-year-old singer Ben James taking over Bonsall’s role.

GPB caught up with legendary bass vocalist Sterban about his love for Southern music, his stint as a background singer for Elvis Presley, his 52-year career with the Oak Ridge Boys and the enduring popularity of their 1981 hit “Elvira,” which PBS described as a “fun and frivolous” song that stays “lodged in people’s brains” forever.

Read the whole interview at GPB.org.

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