Welcome to A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. Hello and welcome to the show. I hope the week is treating you really well.
I’m rather excited today to be bringing you one of the most recognisable personalities in country and gospel music. He’s been a member of one of the longest ever running groups and at the tender age of 85, he’s just written his very first song. Let me tell you a little bit about the group he’s been in to begin with.
It’s the Oak Ridge Boys that began life as a gospel quartet before gradually modernising and moving into secular country pop. Even at the height of their popularity though in the late 70s and early 80s, when they were big enough to cross over to the pop charts, the Oak Ridge Boys sound always remained deeply rooted in country gospel four part harmony. Did you know the group actually formed in 1942 when they were known as the Oak Ridge Quartet? In 1956, the band changed their name to the Oak Ridge Boys.
The star of today’s show, the man with the hat and the long grey hair and beard is William Lee Golden. He joined them in 1965. The rest, as they say, is history.
And I’ll let William Lee Golden fill us in with more of the story. Hello. Hello.
How are you? I’m doing good. If it’s cool with you, I’d like to talk to you about your incredible musical life. Can we back up and talk about how you got into all this music stuff? Well, I started out singing and learning to play guitar and singing harmonies when I was six and seven years old.
My sister taught me how to play and sing. She needed a rhythm guitar player. She needed a harmony singer.
She could play guitar and mandolin and piano. She was three and a half years older than me and just talented as she could be. But she taught me how to play guitar, the chords, and how to sing harmony, which are the chords also.
Then it was later on, we sang as a duet, you know, old country songs and country gospel songs. We’d get to sing on granddaddy’s radio show about once a week and get to sing a song and sing in little school houses and churches around where I grew up. My granddaddy Golden was a fiddle player, so he encouraged the music.
And then later in high school, I joined the FFA Quartet, Future Farmers of America Kids. So that was where I learned to love four-part harmony singing. Of course, you didn’t have that beautiful, deep voice that you possess today, did you? No, I didn’t.
In fact, I was a little kid and I could sing high. I sang the high parts. I would sing the tenor above her.
And then later on, when I got in high school, I think I sang some tenor in that one, too. But then it was a sing tenor or a baritone. It was singing with a group that I met, the Oak Ridge Boys, and performed on stage with them three or four times and got to know them and then pursued being able to sing with them.
And I made a trip to Nashville to talk to them about that. And anyhow, they were one of my favorite groups. And it was not only working with them, I admired them and their talents and all, but they had cut two albums with the Warner Brothers.
It was my favorite albums back then. And I know that I am. I’m so glad I know that I am.
Oh, yes. I’m so glad I know that I am. I’m satisfied.
Satisfied. And I know that I am. I’m satisfied.
Satisfied. And I know that I am. I’m satisfied.
Satisfied. And I know that I am. I’m so glad I know that I am.
Oh, yes. I’m so glad I know that I am. I also love four-part harmony stuff on like the coasters, you know, rock and roll, yackety yack, don’t talk back.
Those songs, I love that and rock and roll. They had groups in rock and roll back then, you know, when I was growing up and right after rock and roll hit, you know, when it was in the platters and all these great doo-wop groups that had four-part harmony songs. And they thought some of them would have great bass singers.
Getting with the Oak Ridge Boys, I joined them in 1965, and I did 60 years ago. How did you get to join them? Well, like I said, I’d met them being on big shows. I knew they had made a change in the group at one time.
And I thought, I didn’t think that guy quite fit them. So about six months later, I drove to Nashville and talked to them about that and told them what I thought. I asked them if they’d ever make another change.
I’d like an opportunity to try out for a gig. So about two months later, they called me and invited me to come to Nashville. They said they needed a new baritone singer.
They said, well, man, we’d love to have you. I turned my notice in at a gig, did a job that I was doing, packed my clothes and come back to Nashville. Anyhow, that’s how I got the gig.
So I dedicated my life to learning. Every day is a learning experience. And you give it all you’ve got throughout your life, and take every opportunity to be able to sing that you get the opportunity to.
So the moral of that story is that if you hadn’t had the guts to approach them in the first place, it would have never happened. That’s true. So no one was knocking on my door trying to give me a full time job singing.
I had to go after it. And just like when you get there, it’s like life is, if you don’t get out and go sing, you’ve got to prepare for it. And you’ve also got to go out there and do it.
If you’re going to survive, every day is a new day to get better. You never get too old to learn something new. How did your life change once you joined the group? Well, I had three young boys.
And so I was with them and we’d go home and visit for about six months on my times off and back and forth. But then I moved my family up to Hendersonville here in Tennessee. It changed from singing part time to dedicating all my days to be prepared and to focus on what it takes to survive singing.
And from the old days of when we did it all ourselves, you know, sometimes you had to book the dates yourself and you had to be your own roadies and carry your own equipment, set it all up and go change clothes and put on a suit and go sing. And then after that’s over, you go back and put on your clothes to carry out all the equipment and load it back up. So that’s kind of what we did at that point.
When you started with them, they were already a very successful gospel quartet, weren’t they? And once you joined them, their direction changed a whole lot. Well, it was kind of a thing where sometimes being in groups can be challenging. You know, it’s you’re dealing with different personalities, different people, but you have to be able to be sharing and giving.
You can’t allow your egos to get out of hand. So that’s the thing that we tried to do was to try to keep our egos in check, especially, you know, when we really started having big hit records and crossover records and things. We tried to make our concerts and our shows much better, investing in our quality of technology that we were presenting.
You know, we took big production on the show. We were some of the very first people to take big production out on the road in concerts, in country music. Rock and roll was doing it, but there was no one in country music back then.
It was a late night band addiction at the Y’all Come Back Saloon. In a boy, soft and trembling, she’d sing a song to cowboy as a smoky halo circled round her raving head. And all the fallen angels, pinball playing rounders, stopped the games that they’d been playing for the loser’s evening prayer.
Why had you made the transition from gospel to country? Did you see a bigger potential in going country or what was the rationale behind that? What it was, was we had in 1969, I’d been with the group about five years, I guess, we had a four piece band, a drummer, a bass player, a piano player and a guy that played steel guitar and electric guitar. And we went to California to Whitney Studios out of outside of L.A. there. And we took our band and we went in and recorded a full album together with the Oak Ridge Boys, our band.
That year, Light album was released. That album won all the awards and gospel music that year. You feel like, you know, if this is the top of the heap, it’s not a large heap.
You realize that you’re singing songs that most people only want to hear one day a week. So it’s gospel music. There’s six more days a week that people want to live and not be reminded about Sunday and sin and those things.
So I realized we needed to make a change, that we needed to expand our music. And at that point, because we’d worked with some of these country groups and they were some of the nicest people we ever met. And it was none of the backbiting and jealousies and all that in country music.
So we worked with Roy Clark, we worked with Johnny Cash and those people. Then we got with Jim Halsey to manage the Oak Ridge Boys. He took us from being a gospel group until we released our first country album.
So that was 1977. We had the Y’all Come Back Salute. It went to number two, stayed there for about a month or so.
That started, it opened the door and our third single went to number one. It was a song called I’ll Be True to You. Beautiful ballad.
They met up on the blue moon and they partied on a cloudy day. They were so in love and out of school. But he was going so far, far away.
She said, I’ll be true to you. Even though you don’t want me to. I’ll be blue for you.
Even though you’ve asked me not to. Every album we had, we pulled three singles off of it and had a new album every year and had a great run. 1981, we released Elvira.
After recording it, Elvira flew up the charts on country music. It spilled over into pop and rock and roll and every radio station that was playing music was playing Elvira. And it went on to the top of the pop charts and rock and roll charts.
To the top 100 charts on Billboard. Anyhow, that was a real interesting time and the Oak Ridge Boys have been able to build a household name and to be able to work most all the dates that we can physically work every year. William, what was that time like for you? You’d come from southern Alabama singing gospel.
You transitioned into country. All of a sudden, you’re the top of the pop and the rock charts, the hot 100 charts. What did that feel like for you? Well, it was gratifying to realize that after about, I joined in 65 and by the time we hit 75, we were on the verge of having our first country album.
So it was 12 years after I had joined, we finally got our first country album. First country song. And then it was like four years later after that, releasing an album a year that we had Elvira.
Again, it was a song that everybody in America was singing. Absolutely. Yeah.
Not only in America, I got to tell you. Families would bring their little kids two or three years old and hold them up to the stage and tell us that they knew all the words to the song. And it’s the first song they ever knew all the words to.
So it had a multi-generation appeal as far as people from 1 to 101, basically. Elvira Elvira My heart’s on fire Elvira Lives like my heart Elvira was an obscure doo-wop style novelty song from the 60s that became a major Grammy-winning crossover smash. Not only did it hit number one on the country charts, but its infectious boom-poppa-mow-mow bass vocal, Hook, boosted it into the top five on the pop charts.
It still remains the Oak Ridge Boys’ biggest seller ever.
This is a Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. Although it took William Lee Golden and the Oakridge Boys more than a decade to experience any real success, there were never any times when the group considered giving up the fight.
But it certainly wasn’t easy, as you’re about to hear. I never have. I’ve made a decision to follow it as far as it could take me and I’m still following that.
So by the time you had Elvira, you must have been pinching yourself and I’d imagine that egos might have started to get a little out of control at that point? Well, it was after Elvira, then we had Bobby Sue, which is another song that went to the top of the country charts. It spilled over into the Pop 100, so it went up close to the top of the charts too. I heard about her from a friend of mine.
They had a dog, she knows the truth. Nobody’s going above, above Bobby Sue. And can’t you see my love is true.
Country music at that time was, it was like three times as big as gospel music. But then when you crossed over into pop stream music and played on all those pop records and stations and rock and roll stations, it tripled again as far as the crowd sizes it was appealing to and the people that was coming out to see it. When Elvira came along, we had, in the late 70s, 79, 80, we did the full house tour with Kenny Rogers and Dottie West.
And we would go out and sing. We did two years of that with Kenny Rogers. We did like 200 big arenas, 200 of the largest arenas in the country.
We did a package of Kenny Rogers, the Oak Ridge Boys, and Dottie West. Then we had Elvira right after two years of that. And that propelled us into headlining the big arenas.
And then we had opening acts for the Oak Ridge Boys, the Bellamy Brothers, different people, you know, that would help our shows. So it was a lot of fun times. Did you all manage to keep your feet on the ground? Well, most of the time.
Sometimes we’d get a little out of it. Way out on the edge out there occasionally. I mean, I’d imagine that with all that success, it would be pretty hard to keep yourself grounded and not kind of spin out a little bit.
Well, sometimes it can be rough on relationships. I know I sang a song with the Oaks called Trying to Love Two Women. It’s like a ball and chain.
At the time I recorded it, Ron Chancey, the record producer, he knew about the story. That was kind of my life story at that point. At that point, you know, I was in love with two women, my wife and my girlfriend.
So it was, I recorded that song and that’s what went on. It’s not that it worked out because you wind up, sometimes, like I did, I lost both of them for us. When they approach you to, they want to know who you love.
I mean, you’re telling this when you love them and then they get together and talk. Then they come to you together and want to know who do you love. Yeah, I’ve been down that road.
In fact, I wound up without either one of them. So that’s kind of what that can lead to. Trying to love two women is like a ball and chain.
Trying to love two women is like a ball and chain. Sometimes the pleasure ain’t worth the strain. It’s a long old grind and it tires your mind.
Trying to hold two women is tearing me apart. Trying to hold two women is tearing me apart. One’s got my money, the other’s got my heart.
It’s a long old grind and it tires your mind. I guess music was your first love always, wasn’t it? That would have had to come pride of place before your family and girlfriends or anything else. You had to devote yourself entirely to the music and it was a hard taskmaster.
Well, probably so. I take full responsibility for being an absentee husband and creating situations that it was not my wife’s fault. I spoke to the late Gordon Lightfoot some time ago before he passed away and he also was quite remorseful about the time that he had lapsed and let relationships and children and stuff go and he said he’d been trying to do his absolute best to make up to everybody around him that he’d wronged.
But I would imagine that, I mean, you wouldn’t have had a choice. You swept away with the current and the world, your audiences, the record companies, everyone is demanding something from you. So it’d be really hard to pay full attention to what matters most too.
It is. And, again, you get caught up into the everyday thing. Every day’s a new day in a new town and headed that way.
So that’s one thing about this business is you’ve got to keep your focus and you can’t allow people to distract you and pull you off or this side or this side. And you’ve got to keep your focus on where it is you’re at and where it is you’re wanting to go in life. And you pursue that.
And every day is a new day to get closer to that. I guess that explains why you’ve had four wives. It probably is.
Yeah. I’m setting fancy free Because she wants to go She’s tired of loving me She told me so I guess she don’t know Just how much she means to me But along with all my dreams I’m setting fancy free Yes, I’m setting fancy free Even though I love her still She’d be no good to me If I held her against her will Even though that girl She’s the best part of my world Along with all my dreams I’m setting fancy free William, what happened in 1987 with the band? Because you left the band at that stage, didn’t you? For a short time only. Yeah, I was and I was probably a little controversial.
Certainly with my look and all, you know, it was not what they would have wanted. Anyhow, it’s one thing led to another. But again, those situations, when people are young, they can make foolish decisions and they can allow egos and greed and selfishness to mess up a good deal.
Again, I’ve made my share of mistakes and kind of pushed the limit in life and enjoyed life. I’m open about what I do normally and I don’t try to pretend to be somebody that I’m not. And sometimes that gets you in trouble.
You say that you were controversial and because of your image. You’ve always maintained the same image, haven’t you? Well, early in my career, I was a clean cut guy with clean shaven and clothed hair and the whole bit. Somewhere along the way, I went camping with a bunch of primitive camping mountain man guys.
Went off to a weekend on a primitive camping field. I enjoyed that. I like getting back away from electricity and starting a fire with a flint steel and camping out and living primitive and cooking over a fire and things like that and surviving in the wild.
And it’s exhilarating to go and get away from stuff like the fast life and in hotels and out of hotels and that whole. Today, it’s a hotel. You’re checking in, checking out and all of that.
But it was a good diversion from that when things really got going, successful with the Oak Ridge Forest where we could pay our bills and things. But it was good to escape. And that’s when the beard emerged? It was then I had a stubble beard, like a five-day growth look or a one-week growth look.
And I had that for about two or three years. And then I’d go on these camping trips. These guys, these woolly-looking mountain men would say, man, I want that beard to ever grow.
And I got to thinking, well, I better see if it will. So I decided to let it grow naturally and just not trim it or anything. It took about three years to get out to its full length.
I still haven’t trimmed it. So that’s from 1980 was the last time that I trimmed my beard. Don’t need a map to get there.
You can get there from anywhere. When you’re going in your head. I can see the arms are preaching.
Just like the day I was leaving. It’s been oh so many years. Well, if you get on the fiscal silver dollar line.
Take my time. See all I can see. Hitler wasn’t up to go.
We’ll have our own. When did you write your autobiography? During the pandemic, I turned off all the negative hate on television news. When the pandemic hit, they sent us all home.
Entertainers, singers and musicians told us we were part of the other ones that they didn’t need. You know, we’re not the essential and the unessential. I felt like I was being lied to and deceived.
And I felt an evilness coming out about three weeks into the pandemic. Anyhow, I had to get away from it. Got out on the back patio here under the trees.
I had a vision to do this thing with my family. But a couple of years earlier and I couldn’t get them all together. They had careers going and doing 150 days a year with the Oak Ridge Boys.
I couldn’t get it going. So at that time, I realized now’s the time to do what I’ve been wanting to do. Got the family over here.
We started singing. Then we went in the studio and recorded what we were doing. And we wound up recording 34 old songs.
Songs that had inspired us during life to be in the music business. Songs that we had always loved, that the writers were essential. And the people that performed them were essential in our lives.
And we wanted to document that and do it in harmony with the family. And so my kids all sing harmonies. We got a young bass singer, a friend of ours.
It’s one of the best you’ll ever hear. Anyhow, he joined us. We did a lot of four-part harmony singing on all these old classic songs.
And country music and gospel music and some old time rock and roll songs. We were harmonizing it. Take it easy.
Don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy. Light it up, but it’s tempting. Don’t even try to understand.
Just find a place to make your stand. Take it easy. We did two Eagle songs.
Chris, my son, did Southern Accent by Tom P. The rest he did, Hollywood Nights. My son, Craig, did one of Greg Albin’s songs called Multicolored Lady. We had some of the top musicians in Nashville playing all our records with us.
So we got in the studio here and there. We couldn’t have problems stopping singing. It was so exhilarating.
Healing going through such a time. They told us we couldn’t get together in the crowd. We can’t go to church and all these things you can’t do.
But we got together as a family and our friends and musicians. And we made music through that. We found healing mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
Singing these songs and harmonizing on those courses. There’s a lot of classic songs that never had harmony in the beginning on those songs. I belong in West Virginia Mountain mama, take me home Country roads I hear her voice in the morning hour She calls me, the radio reminds me Of my home so far away Driving down the road, I get a feeling that I should’ve been home So it was there that I also did an album with the Oak Ridge Boys in the pandemic.
Front porch singing was the last one that Joe sang with us. Then I did the autobiography with Scott England. We sat there and talked for two hours and then he’d pick his recorder up, his tablet.
He said, well, I’ll see you in a couple of days. He’d be back in a couple of days. I guess we probably had 50 or 60 or 60 sit downs of him asking questions.
And I told him, I said, you know, I’m not really a writer. You’re welcome to talk to anybody that we talk about and get their side of the story about who I am. So he did.
He talked to my first wife, talked to my fourth wife. My first wife talked about my unfaithfulness and about the story with my girlfriend getting together and hitting me up about who do you love. You’re telling her you love her and you’re also telling me you love me, what it was.
So I really did. I love both of them. The book is called Behind the Beard and that’s exactly what you get.
An amusing, poignant and brutally honest memoir.
This is a Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. William Lee Golden’s book gives the reader a great insight into who the man behind the beard really is.
So, who is he, in his own words? Well, I’m nobody special. I grew up on a farm in south Alabama and northwest Florida. Dad was a big farmer.
My granddaddy was a fiddle player. He was also a farmer. But I was impacted by music when I was real young.
And it inspired me. It stimulated my excitement. And I loved playing and singing.
It was something that my sister taught me when I was six and seven years old. And I kept learning every time I would sing and learn new songs. You know, you learn new harmony parts to those songs.
And it’s been a valuable asset to me throughout all of my singing career. The fundamental basic things that my sister and my mother taught me when I was six and seven. Making chords.
Singing. And harmonizing. And all of that.
And the joy that music can bring us when we do that. Two men rode out on horseback Said goodbye and until then I should not be surprised at all if I never see you again He said if you never see me Make sure you tell my friends That I was preaching Jesus saves until the bitter end His voice was like the thunder And we stayed there all night long He baptized several thousand And he taught us right from wrong Most nights he went hungry He slept on cabin floors But he spoke just like a hurricane On fire for the Lord He came through town at midnight With a Bible and a cross He looked just like an outlaw Jesus died on circuit rider Music’s been your religion, huh? And still is. Yes.
Which brings us up to today. And there are two things more that I want to talk to you about. Firstly, that the Oak Ridge Boys have a new single.
It’s called I Thought About You Lord and it features Willie Nelson. Can you tell us a little bit about that? The Oak Ridge Boys got a brand new album. This was the month after Joe Bonzo left our group.
Joe was struggling with ALS, the Lou Gehrig disease, for three years. It got to the point that he was having to be helped on stage, balanced on a stool by two people. But he was a trooper.
He kept going because he was singing good. But he lost his abilities and his legs. And at the end, it was the last two or three days in December that our Christmas show was going.
He wanted to make it to the end. And he did make it to the end. But it was the last three days that he struggled the most.
And at the end of the last Christmas date, he said, guys, that’s it. I can’t go any further. So the next day, Joe called this young Ben James.
He said, Doug, get your singing breeches on. The Oaks need you to sing with them and fill in here for me. So Ben came.
We never had a rehearsal with him. He still hasn’t missed a word or a pitch. And it’s amazing.
He was a godsend to the Oak Ridge Boys. So he was singing with a couple of other top bluegrass groups when we met him. And he told us how much that he loved the Oaks and had grown up loving us.
And he saw that Joe was struggling and he offered his service. He’d love to come and help him and stand by him and sing or behind him and sing, help him if he got to struggling. And how did this new single come about with Willie Nelson? It came by that Dave Cobb is our producer.
We’ve done five albums now with Dave Cobb. He did the Elvis movie soundtrack that was out a couple years ago. He brought the song in and when we cut it he wanted to get Willie to be involved with us on it since we had never worked and never sang a song with Willie.
Everybody else in the business sang a song with Willie except the Oak Ridge Boys. So it was something that we would love to do. Seems like a natural fit.
Yeah. I thought about dreams and how much I’d like to climb on I thought about friends and how rare it is to find them. I thought about you the most gentle sweet and kind one I thought about you Lord I thought about you I thought about life and the way that things are going I thought about love and the pain when there is a knowing.
I thought about you the one who is all knowing. I thought about you Lord I thought about you Just before I let him go, I want to tell you that William Lee Golden, the Country and Gospel Hall of Famer, recently enlisted the help of a young Australian singer-songwriter by the name of Danny Stefanetti. To help him complete and sing on his new solo single, I Got My Heart On You.
Not a bad effort for someone who’s just turned 85. Well, it was a situation where my youngest son Solomon, he and his mother divorced about 10 or 11 years ago now. At that time, Solomon was about 12 years old.
After the divorce she picked up and moved Solomon to Austin and he was out of reach. I would try to call him and talk to him and it became a thing. So that’s how it all started.
I’d call and leave messages and I wouldn’t get return calls and it was, I was just missing the communication with my son that I’d been with and every day I was home since he was born for the first 12 years. Anyhow, I was here at home that weekend and out in the backyard under the trees and on the patio and I just wanted to have a way to express my feelings. I was feeling frustrated that he was a teenager then and had been pulled away and was drifting further apart.
As a father, I was missing out on his adolescence and his teenage years and that was heart-wrenching for me to deal with. So I wanted to, I knew if I wrote him a letter trying to say that it could be discarded and thrown in the trash or whatever, it wouldn’t be something he might keep, but I got to putting words together in my mind and my thoughts and I started putting melodies for my feelings and then remembering back and reflecting back from the day he was born to places we did together and traveling anyhow. After I got to writing, it’s the second, third day there and I couldn’t get away from it.
It was going in my mind when I’d wake up and all day working and focusing on that and slowly putting the song together. I sang it into my phone and sent it to Danny Stefanetti’s girl that’s extremely talented. She put music to my melody and my words and she’s written over 300 songs.
She’s an incredible guitarist, incredible singer. Anyhow, she brought that here with me. She had sang the song I liked the way she sang it.
So she brought the computer here and a nice microphone, set it up in here. We recorded my version of it here with her track and her playing guitar again. She had layers of guitar that she put on there.
She did such a good job. I wanted her it’s a song that lends itself to someone else singing a verse and I wanted her to take the second verse. It’s a love song is what it is.
It happened to be inspired by my son Solomon that when he was five and six years old he would call me on the phone and leave a message on my phone when I’d be on the road 150 days a year. He’d say, hey dad, this is Solomon. I got my heart on you.
Keep those messages. I remember when you told me I’ve got my heart on you Those words I hold out deep inside How I feel for you And I’ll never live a day without your love No, I’ll never live a day without your love I could shout it from the roof at the top of my lungs I’ve got my heart on you Traveled across the country From the east coast to L.A. Took an all night flight to London and saw Paris along the way Walked virgin island beaches Watched the moon rise across the bay Thank God now for treasured times How has that song resonated with Solomon now? How does he feel about it? Well, Solomon’s 23 now. He’s in medical school and college in Austin.
And I talk to him occasionally. He called me here this past week and we talked. I think he’s understanding more as he’s becoming a young man of my love for him.
I wanted him to know that I loved him as much as he shared as a young child that he loved me and when he would leave me those messages. So that’s how it is. Makes the hair stand up on my arms.
Lovely. And there are many parents I’m sure listening to this who are separated from their kids for one reason or another who will take great heed from what you’ve done and reaching out to your son in this way, in the way that you knew best to do that through your music. William Lee Golden, I’ll let you go now.
You’ve been extraordinarily generous with your time with me. We thank you so much and congratulations on an amazing career and an incredible dedication to music from all the Oak Ridge Boys fans and the William Lee Golden fans right around the world. From our heart to yours, we thank you.
Thank you so much. It’s been a real pleasure. Bye.
Living in a quiet house Without Big Bird or a Mickey Mouse And Kool-Aid on the couch Thank God for kids Thank God for kids There’s magic for a while A special kind of sunshine And a smile Did you ever stop to think Or wonder why The nearest thing to heaven Is a child Daddy, how does this thing fly And a hundred other ways of flying I really don’t know, but I try Thank God for kids And when I look down in those trusting eyes That look to me, then I realize There’s love that I can’t buy Thank God for kids Thank God for kids There’s magic for a while A special kind of sunshine And a smile Did you ever stop to think Or wonder why The nearest thing to heaven Just as a footnote, I also wanted to extend my deepest condolences to William on the recent loss of his eldest son, Rusty. With musical blood on both sides of the family, Rusty showed an early interest in music, becoming a confident drummer by the age of 12, and playing professionally for the Rambos band by age 13. In his late teens, Rusty traded in his drumsticks for the keys, and at 17 began touring with the American singer-songwriter Larry Gatlin.
In his 20s, Rusty helped found the country rock band The Boys Band, which released their debut album in 1982. He was a treasured member of the family band called William Lee Golden and the Goldens. During the pandemic, they released 24 songs.
Rusty was 65 when he died. Thanks for your company today. I sincerely hope you’ve enjoyed hearing from William Lee Golden.
Can I count on you again same time next week? I hope so. Bye now.