Sometimes you just have to start a singing group to perform for nuclear scientists working to produce plutonium for atomic bombs.

Right?

Sometimes you just have to do that.

The Oak Ridge Boys formed in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1943, originally singing country music under the name Wally Fowler and The Georgia Clodhoppers. Catchy. They soon changed both their name and their sound, however, after finding themselves continually booked to play the nearby Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a sprawling collection of buildings and housing where the US government installed scientists during WW II to contribute to the Manhattan Project and other top secret research. (Sounds like a super safe place to perform — and who needs stage lights when you’ve got such a healthy, radiant glow?)

Anyway, the important science dudes and their families couldn’t go anywhere (there was a war on, there were spies!), so the entertainment was brought to them. And they loved The Georgia Clodhoppers.

They also apparently loved gospel, and Wally Fowler knew how to play to his audience, changing the name of the group to The Oak Ridge Quartet and switching their repertory from some gospel to all gospel. (I guess if you’re working on a project involving plutonium that could lead to the end of the world, you’d take comfort in songs about an afterlife where you’ll all find peace in heaven.)

Over the next 30 years, the group became one of the most popular gospel outfits in the United States, weathered dozens of personnel changes, and made a subtle name change, becoming The Oak Ridge Boys in the early 1960’s because they thought Quartet sounded too stodgy. In the mid-70’s the boys (now featuring none of the original members) took a tentative step back towards country music which resulted in low sales in both of their chosen genres, but a few years later they went whole hog, abandoning overt gospel, and their first four pure country albums went Top 10 on the US country charts, scoring ten Top 5 singles along the way.

Oak Ridge Mania had truly begun. And it was about to reach its national peak.

For their fifth non-gospel album, The Oak Ridge Boys reached back 15 years to a song written and first recorded by Dallas Frazier, called “Elvira.” Frazier had already written #1 pop (“Alley Oop”) and country songs (“There Goes My Everything”), but his single of “Elvira” didn’t fare so well. As it turned out, however, other artists loved the song and many tried to score the elusive hit, including Kenny Rogers & The First Edition and later, Rodney Crowell. Being a quartet, The Oak Ridge Boys had an advantage when they tackled the tune, as their 4-part harmonies suited the song perfectly, and their arrangement added a bit of fun the earlier versions lacked.

Released as a single in 1981, “Elvira” immediately topped the country chart, but also crossed over and climbed to #5 on the Hot 100, the highest the group would ever reach during the few times they appeared on that chart. During the remainder of the 80’s, The Oak Ridge Boys would score 13 more #1 country hits. Over the course of 40 years they had gone from playing to a small, captive audience to a large, captivated one, from playing in the shadow of a nuclear reactor to generating their own 1.21 gigawatts of power.

So giddy up! And hi-ho silver. . . with The Oak Ridge Boys.