Few Country Music groups have had the enduring popularity, cultural significance or crossover success of The Oak Ridge Boys, a vocal harmony quartet that started out in traditional country and gospel during World War II and evolved with the times to help popularize and modernize Country Music far beyond traditional genre and regional lines. The group went through numerous lineup changes in its early decades before Duane Allen, Joe Bonsall, William Lee Golden, and Richard Sterban took control in the 1960s and early 1970s and turned it into a dynamic Country Music force. The alignment focused on high-energy vocal harmonies that brought crowds to their feet with increasingly secular music and a look and attitude that more accurately reflected the times, characterized by Golden's still-magnificent flowing beard and fur coats.
 
The Oak Ridge Boys have received 15 CMA Awards nominations and won two: Vocal Group of the Year in 1978 and Single of the Year in 1981 for “Elvira” (the group's backing band won CMA Instrumental Group of the Year in 1978 and 1986). The Oaks were inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2000. Bonsall and Sterban were inducted into the Philadelphia Music Alliance Walk of Fame in 1994. Golden received the Alabama Music Hall of Fame's Life Work Award for Performing Achievement in 1997. And Duane Allen was honored with induction into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame last year.