They left that Las Vegas Hilton suite believing they would make it largely because Johnny Cash had said they would, after he urged the four singers not to separate before the rest of the world had a chance to hear what audiences had not recognized yet.
The group possessed something audiences had not recognized yet.
Johnny Cash’s contract had one number, yet the Oak Ridge Boys kept receiving more. In the mid 1970s Johnny Cash began paying the Oak Ridge Boys more than their contract required.
The quartet had already won major gospel awards, but their decision to broaden their sound had left them stranded between two businesses. Gospel promoters believed they had wandered too far from the old circuit. Country agents still regarded them as a gospel act.
Joe Bonsall later remembered a stretch when almost nobody knew where to book them.
The Figures Became Impossible To Ignore
According to a later Billboard account, the group’s income fell to about $75,000 in 1975. The following year the Oak Ridge Boys lost roughly $100,000.
Cash could see what was happening. He took them on the road, placed them on his Las Vegas shows and quietly increased their pay. Sometimes there were bonuses.
The extra money was never part of a public rescue campaign. It simply appeared because Cash knew the four singers were hurting.
A Circle Inside The Las Vegas Hilton Suite
During one engagement he brought Duane Allen, William Lee Golden, Richard Sterban and Joe Bonsall upstairs to a suite at the Las Vegas Hilton. The men sat in a circle while Cash told them about that unrecognized gift and pressed them to stay together.
In 1977 “Y’all Come Back Saloon” finally gave the quartet its country breakthrough. Four years later “Elvira” carried their harmonies far beyond country radio, becoming a crossover phenomenon and turning the Oak Ridge Boys into one of the defining vocal groups of the 1980s.
By then the lean Las Vegas years had disappeared behind packed theaters, television appearances and platinum records. But those years had required more than confidence. They had required enough money to keep four men, their musicians and their equipment moving from one engagement to the next.
Johnny Cash supplied some of it without asking for a place in the story. The Oak Ridge Boys eventually sold millions of records, but first they had to remain together long enough to record them, and Cash helped buy them that precious time.