Country Music Star, Joe Bonsall, Dies at 76

(RepublicanJournal.org) – Joe Bonsall, a star of country group the Oak Ridge Boys, had died after a long illness. The singer, who dropped out of the group’s farewell tour in January, had been their tenor for over 50 years.

Joseph Sloan Bonsell Jr was born in Philadelphia on May 18, 1948. His parents were both US Army veterans who had served in WWII (his father landed in Normandy on D-Day) and he would later write a book, GI Joe and Lillie, about their marriage. As a teenager, he wanted to be a veterinarian, but then he found another talent. His introduction to singing came through gospel music, and in 1967 he moved to Hattiesburg, Pennsylvania, to join a gospel group, the Keystone Quartet, full-time.

Gospel music was a popular and well-established genre, but occasionally it threw up some rebels, and in 1973 Bonsall joined a group in Hendersonville, Tennessee. The Oak Ridge Boys had started out in 1943 as a country group called Wally Fowler and the Georgia Clodhoppers, but during the war, they were hired to entertain workers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who were restricted to the lab because their work on nuclear weapons was so secret. The band was so popular at the lab that they were hired again and again; eventually, they spent so much time there that they changed their name to the Oak Ridge Quartet and focused on gospel music. Over the next 30 years most of the members left and were replaced; then in 1973 Bonsall, who two of the group knew from the Keystone Quartet, joined them.

At first, the renamed Oak Ridge Boys still performed gospel music, but they were innovating. As Bonsall said later they were the first gospel group to have their own drummer, and “everybody thought that we were longhaired hippie boys… it just wasn’t accepted.” Not long after Bonsall joined they drifted back to country music and were signed by Columbia Records. They went on to have several No. 1 hits, starting with 1978’s “I’ll Be True To You.”

As well as singing, Bonsall wrote several books including a four-part series for children. Married since 1963, he had two daughters. Bonsall died of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) at his home in Hendersonville on July 9.