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    Joe Bonsall, Tenor Voice of the Oak Ridge Boys, Dies at 76

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    His vocals on songs like “Elvira” were a key to the evolution of the group, originally a Southern gospel quartet, into perennial country hitmakers.Joe Bonsall, who for more than 50 years was the tenor voice of the Oak Ridge Boys, one of the most popular and enduring vocal groups in the history of country music, died on Tuesday at his home in Hendersonville, Tenn. He was 76.His publicist, Jeremy Westby, said the cause was complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the neuromuscular disorder also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. (Mr. Bonsall issued a statement in January saying that he was retiring from touring with the Oak Ridge Boys but would remain a member of the group.)Originally a Southern gospel quartet, the Oak Ridge Boys had 17 Billboard No. 1 country singles, as well as 17 more that made the country Top 10, after reinventing themselves as a country act in the early 1970s. The group, which has sold more than 41 million records worldwide, was formed in Oak Ridge, Tenn., in the early 1940s, and disbanded and reformed twice before its lineup stabilized with Mr. Bonsall’s arrival in 1973.“Elvira” (1981) and “Bobbie Sue” (1982), two of the group’s best-known No. 1 hits, featured Mr. Bonsall on lead vocals in place of the regular lead singer, Duane Allen. William Lee Golden and Richard Sterban, who sang baritone and bass, rounded out the four-part harmony quartet during its heyday in the 1970s and ’80s.The Oak Ridge Boys in 1982 with the Grammy Award they won for “Elvira,” one of their 17 songs to reach No. 1 on the Billboard country chart. From left: Mr. Bonsall, Duane Allen, William Lee Golden and Richard Sterban.Reed Saxon/Associated PressAmong the group’s other No. 1 hits were “Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight” (1979), an early Rodney Crowell composition, and “American Made” (1983), a wry topical number that showcased Mr. Bonsall’s clean, resounding tenor. (“American Made” was later used in a television commercial for Miller Beer.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Buzz Cason, Songwriter Best Known for ‘Everlasting Love,’ Dies at 84

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      As a performer, he was a leading figure in the early days of Nashville rock ’n’ roll. He later found success as a writer, producer and publisher.Buzz Cason, a guiding force in the early days of Nashville rock ’n’ roll and a writer of the pop standard “Everlasting Love,” a surging profession of undying devotion that reached the pop Top 40 in four consecutive decades, died on June 16 at his home in Franklin, Tenn. He was 84.His death was announced by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. The announcement did not specify a cause.A pivotal figure in Nashville’s evolution as a recording hub, Mr. Cason had a hand in virtually every facet of the music industry. He sang, wrote and published songs, as well as producing records and operating his own recording studio.He had his biggest success as the writer, with Mac Gayden, of “Everlasting Love.” The R&B singers Robert Knight (1967) and Carl Carlton (1974) recorded hit versions of the song, as did Gloria Estefan (1995) and the ad hoc pop duo Rex Smith and Rachel Sweet (1981). U2 released a stripped-down take of “Everlasting Love” as one of two B-sides of the 1989 single “All I Want Is You.”“We didn’t know what we had,” Mr. Cason said of the song in an interview at an event held in his honor at the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2014. “It was a really great radio song.”“Everlasting Love,” in its many versions, has received more than 10 million plays to date, according to the music rights organization BMI. It is among the most successful songs in any genre to come from Nashville.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Toby Keith Will Be Inducted Into the Country Hall of Fame This Year

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      The organization behind the honors avoids electing artists in the year of their death, but the singer died in February just after this year’s vote closed.The country music star Toby Keith, who died last month after battling stomach cancer, has been selected for the Country Music Hall of Fame despite a rule against electing artists in the year of their death, the Country Music Association said on Monday.The induction is moving forward on a technicality: The vote closed on Feb. 2 — three days before the singer’s death on Feb. 5 at age 62.A few hours after officials at the association learned about the death of Keith, the artist behind No. 1 country hits like “Who’s Your Daddy?” and “Made in America,” they received the results of the vote, which included Keith as a chosen inductee.“My heart sank that Tuesday afternoon, knowing that we had missed the chance to inform Toby while he was still with us,” Sarah Trahern, the chief executive of the Country Music Association, said as the group announced the new inductees on Monday.It is not uncommon for inductees to be added to the hall of fame posthumously, but the association’s rule specifically disallows artists to be elected in the year of their death. “That doesn’t apply this year,” Trahern said.With a catalog that included both traditional honky-tonk and pop-country, Keith released 20 No. 1 Billboard country singles during his three-decade career. He was a political lightning rod at times, and many remember Keith, who wrote or co-wrote most of his material, for his post-9/11 song “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American),” which proclaimed that putting a “boot in your ass” is the “American way.”Chosen by an anonymous panel of voters, Keith will join more than 150 figures who have helped shape country music, a roster that includes Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Dolly Parton, Elvis Presley and Charley Pride. The other two additions to the hall of fame that were announced Monday are the musicians John Anderson and James Burton, who will be inducted along with Keith in October at the CMA Theater in Nashville. More

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      Dolly Parton Bows Out of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Nomination

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      The country singer, who was among 17 genre-spanning nominees this year, said, “I don’t feel that I have earned that right” and asked to be removed. Voting has already begun.Dolly Parton does not feel rock ’n’ roll enough for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.The country singer, known for crossover hits like “Jolene,” “I Will Always Love You” and “9 to 5,” said on Monday that she wished to be removed from consideration for the annual honor after earning her first nomination in February.“Even though I am extremely flattered and grateful to be nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, I don’t feel that I have earned that right,” Parton, 76, wrote in a statement posted to social media. “I really do not want votes to be split because of me, so I must respectfully bow out.”❤️ pic.twitter.com/Z6LKfWtlxg— Dolly Parton (@DollyParton) March 14, 2022
      The Rock Hall did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Selection was underway as of last month, and it was unclear what would happen to any potential votes already cast for Parton.Among the 17 nominees eligible for inclusion alongside Parton were others who stretch the traditional definition of rock music: Eminem, A Tribe Called Quest, Lionel Richie, Carly Simon, Dionne Warwick and Kate Bush were selected for the ballot along with bands like Judas Priest, MC5, Rage Against the Machine and New York Dolls.Ballots were sent in February to the more than 1,000 artists, historians and music industry professionals who choose their top five inductees each year, with the winners — typically between five and seven in total — scheduled to be announced in May. This year’s induction ceremony was slated for the fall.The Rock Hall asks its voters to consider an act’s music influence and the “length and depth” of its career, in addition to “innovation and superiority in style and technique.” Following complaints about its treatment of female and Black musicians over the years, the Rock Hall has recently expanded its tent to include artists from rap, pop, R&B and beyond, including Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, Jay-Z and the Notorious B.I.G. Artists in both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock Hall include Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Brenda Lee, among others. Parton was inducted into the Country Hall of Fame in 1999.On its website, the Rock Hall praised Parton as a “living legend and a paragon of female empowerment,” adding that her “unapologetic femininity belied her shrewd business acumen, an asset in the male-dominated music industry.”A 2019 look at the organization’s nearly 900 inductees found that only 7.7 percent were women.Other artists have balked at inclusion in the club before: John Lydon, better known as Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols, thumbed his nose at the band’s induction in 2006, with the band opting not to show. In 2012, when Guns ’n Roses made it, Axl Rose said he would decline to participate and asked that he not be inducted in absentia. Both acts were inducted anyway.In her statement, however, Parton left the door open. She wrote that she hoped the Rock Hall would “be willing to consider me again — if I’m ever worthy,” noting that she had been inspired by the recognition to “put out a hopefully great rock ’n’ roll album at some point in the future.” More

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      Hargus Robbins, Pianist on Country Music Hits, Dies at 84

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      A revered member of Nashville’s A-Team of studio musicians, he was a major contributor to Bob Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde” album.NASHVILLE — Hargus “Pig” Robbins, one of country music’s most prolific session piano players and a key contributor to Bob Dylan’s landmark 1966 album, “Blonde on Blonde,” died on Sunday. He was 84.His death was announced on the website of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. It did not say where he died or specify the cause.A longtime member of Nashville’s so-called A-Team of first-call studio musicians, Mr. Robbins appeared on thousands of popular recordings made here between the late 1950s and mid-2010s.Many became No. 1 country singles, including Hank Snow’s “I’ve Been Everywhere” (1962), Loretta Lynn’s “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)” (1966) and Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” (1974). Several also crossed over to become major pop hits, Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces” (1961) and Kenny Rogers’s “The Gambler” (1978) among them.An instinctive melodicist who valued understatement over flash, Mr. Robbins helped establish the piano as an integral part of the smooth, uncluttered Nashville Sound of the 1960s. He also was a big reason that folk and rock acts like Joan Baez and Mr. Dylan began traveling to Nashville to adopt the impromptu approach to recording popularized here.The former Kingston Trio member John Stewart referred to him as “first-take Hargus Robbins” when, on the closing track of Mr. Stewart’s acclaimed 1969 album, “California Bloodlines,” he listed the Nashville session musicians who appeared on it. Mr. Stewart was acknowledging Mr. Robbins’s knack for playing musical passages flawlessly the first time through.Mr. Robbins’s influence was maybe most pronounced as the Nashville Sound evolved into the more soul-steeped “countrypolitan” style heard on records like George Jones’s 1980 blockbuster single, “He Stopped Loving Her Today.”Mr. Robbins’s rippling, jazz-inflected intros to Charlie Rich’s “Behind Closed Doors” (1973) and Crystal Gayle’s “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” (1977) became enduring expressions of the Southern musical vernacular of their era. Both records were No. 1 country and crossover pop singles.“Of all the musicians on my sessions, he stood the tallest,” the producer and A-Team guitarist Jerry Kennedy said of Mr. Robbins in an exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame.“He has been a backbone for Nashville,” added Mr. Kennedy, who worked with Mr. Robbins on hits by Roger Miller and Jerry Lee Lewis, and on “Blonde on Blonde.”Mr. Robbins acquired his distinctive nickname, Pig, while attending the Tennessee School for the Blind in Nashville as a boy.“I had a supervisor who called me that because I used to sneak in through a fire escape and play when I wasn’t supposed to and I’d get dirty as a pig,” Mr. Robbins said in an interview cited in the Encyclopedia of Country Music.He lost vision in one of his eyes when he was 3, after accidentally poking himself in the eye with a knife. The injured eye was ultimately removed and Mr. Robbins eventually lost sight in his other eye as well.While at the School for the Blind he studied classical music, but he would also play jazz, honky-tonk and barrelhouse blues.Mr. Robbins’s wide-ranging tastes served him well, equipping him for work on soul recordings like Clyde McPhatter’s 1962 pop hit, “Lover Please” (where he was inscrutably credited as Mel “Pigue” Robbins), andArthur Alexander’s “Anna (Go to Him),” a Top 10 R&B single from 1962 covered by the Beatles.Afforded the chance to stretch out stylistically on “Blonde on Blonde,” Mr. Robbins played with raucous abandon on “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” the woozy, carnivalesque No. 2 pop hit hooked by the tagline “Everybody must get stoned.” He employed a tender lyricism, by contrast, on elegiac ballads like “Just Like a Woman” and “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.”Hargus Melvin Robbins was born on Jan. 18, 1938, in Spring City, Tenn. His first big break came in 1959 when the music publisher Buddy Killen secured him an invitation to play on Mr. Jones’s “White Lightning.” Spurred by Mr. Robbins’s rollicking boogie-woogie piano, the record became a No. 1 country single.Another opportunity came two years later, when the producer Owen Bradley, needing someone to fill in for the A-Team pianist Floyd Cramer, hired Mr. Robbins to play on the session for Ms. Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces.” Mr. Cramer soon embarked on a solo career, creating an opening for Mr. Robbins on the A-Team.Mr. Robbins flirted with a solo career in the ’50s, recording rockabilly originals under the name Mel Robbins. “Save It,” an obscure single from 1959, was covered by the garage-punks the Cramps on their 1983 album, “Off the Bone.”One of Mr. Robbins’s instrumental albums, “Country Instrumentalist of the Year,” won a Grammy Award for best country instrumental performance in 1978.Working as a session musician was nevertheless his stock in trade, as a scene from Robert Altman’s 1971 movie “Nashville” memorably attests. Upbraiding his recording engineer when a hippie piano player nicknamed Frog shows up to work on their session instead of Mr. Robbins, the narcissistic country singer played by Henry Gibson shouts, “When I ask for Pig, I want Pig!”Mr. Robbins performing at the Country Music Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2012.Wade Payne/Invision, via Associated PressMr. Robbins was named country instrumentalist of the year by the Country Music Association in 1976 and 2000. Even after he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2012, he continued — then in his 70s — to do studio work with latter-day hitmakers like Miranda Lambert and Sturgill Simpson.Information on survivors was not immediately available.Losing his eyesight may or may not have helped Mr. Robbins cultivate a keener musical sensibility. His playing, in any case, revealed a commitment to listening and imagination that had him responding to his collaborators with a singular depth of feeling.“Pig Robbins is the best session man I’ve ever known,” said Charlie McCoy, a fellow A-Teamer, at a reception held in Mr. Robbins’s honor at the Country Music Hall of Fame. “Anytime Pig’s on a session everyone else plays better.”“If you’re going to be a good player,” Mr. Robbins said at the event, “you have to come up with something that will complement the song and the singer.” More

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      Dallas Frazier, Who Wrote Hits for Country Stars, Dies at 82

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      His songs included the novelty number “Alley Oop,” the Oak Ridge Boys’ hit “Elvira” and “Beneath Still Waters” for Emmylou Harris.Dallas Frazier, a songwriter of great emotional range who wrote No. 1 country hits for Charley Pride, Tanya Tucker and the Oak Ridge Boys, died on Friday at a rehabilitation facility in Gallatin, Tenn., near Nashville. He was 82.His death was confirmed by his daughter Melody Morris, who said he had suffered two strokes since August.Although his most enduring success came in country music, Mr. Frazier also wrote pop and R&B hits for artists like the country-soul singer Charlie Rich and the Louisiana bluesman Slim Harpo. Both released versions of Mr. Frazier’s “Mohair Sam,” a swamp-pop homage to a larger-than-life hipster that, in Mr. Rich’s 1965 Top 40 pop version, became one of Elvis Presley’s favorite songs.Mr. Frazier’s big break, though, came five years earlier with “Alley Oop,” a novelty song that reached No. 1 on the pop chart (No. 3 on the R&B chart) for the Hollywood Argyles in 1960. Inspired by the V.T. Hamlin comic strip of the same name, the song has been recorded several times since, including versions by the Beach Boys and the satirical British art-rockers the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.David Bowie also interpolated the line “Look at those cave men go” from “Alley Oop” in his 1973 single “Life on Mars?”“I had country roots, but I had this other thing going on with me,” Mr. Frazier said, alluding to his omnivorous musical appetite in a 2008 interview with the online magazine Perfect Sound Forever. “I wasn’t stuck in this one field of music. I had other things going on inside my soul.”Mr. Frazier’s bread and butter, nevertheless, was country music, where his songs plumbed an array of subjects and emotions, like humor, heartache and his hardscrabble childhood during the Great Depression.Mr. Frazier wrote “There Goes My Everything” for the Grand Ole Opry star Jack Greene, “Beneath Still Waters” for Emmylou Harris and “Elvira,” with its atavistic “oom poppa, oom poppa” chorus, for the Oak Ridge Boys. All three were career-defining records, and each topped the country chart. (“There Goes My Everything” also reached the pop Top 20 for the British crooner Engelbert Humperdinck in 1967.)Mr. Frazier, left, with Marty Stuart and Connie Smith, performing at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville in 2019. Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for Country Music Hall of Fame and MuseumConnie Smith, a 2012 inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame, has recorded more than five dozen songs written by Mr. Frazier.Dallas June Frazier was born on Oct. 27, 1939, in Spiro, Okla. His parents, William Floyd Frazier and Eva Marie Laughlin Frazier, were itinerant laborers who moved the family to Bakersfield, Calif., to work in the cotton fields there. Young Dallas was just 2½ at the time.The Model A was loaded down and California boundA change of luck was just four days awayBut the only change that I remember seeing for my daddyWas when his dark hair turned to silver graySo goes the second half of the last stanza of “California Cottonfields,” an autobiographical original, written by Mr. Frazier and Earl Montgomery, that became a signature song for Merle Haggard, whose childhood privation rivaled Mr. Frazier’s.“We were part of ‘The Grapes of Wrath,’” Mr. Frazier said in 2008, referring to John Steinbeck’s epic novel of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. “We were the Okies who went out to California with mattresses tied to the tops of their Model A Fords. My folks were poor.”The Fraziers lived in tents and boxcars in the California labor camps, suffering not only the indignity of poverty but also the prejudice of native westerners. Dallas began picking cotton at the age of 6.His father exposed him to country music, playing the latest hits by Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell on the jukebox of their local diner. Dallas Frazier commemorated the experience in “Hank and Lefty Raised My Country Soul,” a song that became a Top 40 country hit for his fellow Oklahoman Stoney Edwards in 1973.Mr. Frazier began writing songs and singing as an adolescent, earning an invitation at 12 to tour with the country star Ferlin Husky after winning a West Coast talent contest. At 14, he signed a contract as a recording artist with Mr. Husky’s label, Capitol Records. During the mid-to-late ’50s, he also appeared regularly on Cliffie Stone’s “Hometown Jamboree,” a popular country music television show broadcast from Los Angeles.In 1963, after his singing career began to founder, Mr. Frazier moved to Nashville with his wife, Sharon, to work for country song publishers. He continued to make the occasional record, steeped in New Orleans-style R&B, before eventually giving himself over to songwriting full time.In 1976, shortly after his induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, Mr. Frazier suddenly retired from music to become the pastor of a church outside Nashville. He returned to writing and performing three decades later, emerging as an elder statesman of the music he helped shape.Besides Ms. Morris, Mr. Frazier is survived by his wife of 63 years, Sharon Carpani Frazier; their two other daughters, Robin Proetta and Alison Thompson; four grandchildren; one great-grandson; and a sister, Judy Shults.Despite his success as a songwriter in country music, Mr. Frazier said that at times he felt hampered by Nashville’s unwritten rules, especially when it came to embracing more wide-ranging musical influences like rock and R&B.“Nobody ever said, ‘Dallas, you can’t do this,’” he told Perfect Sound Forever, “but it was common knowledge that you did certain things. I should have had more product in the rock ’n’ roll field, definitely. Had I been living in L.A. or New York, I would have, but less country, you see.” More