Home Care In Oak Ridge, LA

LA CROSSE, Wis. (WLAX/WEUX) – Giddy up, ah-oom poppa, oom poppa, mow mow… Giddy-up, ah-oom poppa, oom poppa, mow mow… Hi-oh, Silver! A-way!

Name that tune!

I’m willing to wager that a lot more of you said “Elvira by the Oak Ridge Boys” than didn’t.

How cool is that? You can read what is, for all intents and purposes, gibberish and instantly hear the melody to a song that you have heard a thousand times or more. That is the definition of iconic.

The man behind those “oom poppa mow mow’s” is named Richard Sterban. He’s the bass singer in The Oak Ridge Boys but his musical journey goes back much further than that. Sterban is from Camden New Jersey which is just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Sterban says, “There’s a lot of music in that part of the country. And in fact, just across the river, in Philadelphia, myself, as well as Joe Bonsall, our tenor singer…we are a part of the Philadelphia Music Hall of Fame.” It was in Philly that Sterban formed his gospel group, The Keystone Quartet. Eventually, Bonsall would become part of that group as well.

Between his time with Keystones and The Oak Ridge Boys Sterban found himself singing bass with The Stamps Quartet. You might recognize that name because they were Elvis’ backup singers. You know, the King of Rock and Roll?

In 1972, he joined The Oak Ridge Boys and they have been a staple in country music ever since. The Oaks landed their first, number 1 hit, “I’ll Be True to You” in 1979 and for a time, they were ubiquitous with Country Music. If The Oak Ridge Boys weren’t on Hee Haw, they were on The Dukes of Hazard. If they weren’t opening up for Roy Clark, they were performing on The Merv Griffin Show. It is not hyperbole to say that when it comes to Country Music singing groups, The Oak Ridge Boys are in the top two. Period.

While talking with Richard, he shared the story of how The Oak Ridge Boys’ most famous song, Elvira, was written, “The song was written by a gentleman named Dallas Frazier. He was a good friend of ours. He lived in a place called Gallatin, Tennessee. He was driving home from a recording session and he came across the street sign that said Elvira Street. And he pulled his car right up to the street sign. And right there on the spot, he pulled out an envelope or a piece of paper or something and wrote, ‘Elvira, Elvira, my hearts on fire for Elvira.’ And then he wrote, ‘Giddy-up, oom papa papa mow mow’. And the way he told the story,

he said that the ‘oom papa mow mow,’ that part, imitated the bumps on the road. Evidently Elvira Street had a lot of potholes!”

You would think that after 50-plus years of doing something at such an impressive level, one wouldn’t feel the need to do it anymore. That is simply not the case with Sterban and the Oak Ridge Boys. The love of performing for audiences of all ages is just as true today as it was in the 60s when Sterban started down this path. He explains, “We still look forward to it every night. To take our music to our fans and to our audiences? That has not gotten old. We love doing that. We live for it.”

Not only are The Oak Ridge Boys still touring and entertaining the masses, but they are also recording new music and working with exciting new people. One of the hottest names in country music these days is producer extraordinaire, Dave Cobb. The Oaks tapped Cobb to produce their latest effort, 2021’s Front Porch Singing. Sterban says that Cobb… “told us he wanted to capture the feeling of four guys gathering on a front porch and he was able to do that. He’s a master of capturing that kind of feeling.” Sterban also promises that after the first of the year, the Oak Ridge Boys are heading back into the studio to record another new album and they will be doing so, with Dave Cobb. “I don’t have a title that I can give you for our next project… I do not even have a list of songs yet. Other than the fact that after the first of the year, we have plans to go back into the studio again and Dave Cobb has agreed to produce The Oak Ridge Boys again. So, we will have a new project next year.

La Crosse has a chance to see the Oak Ridge Boys up close and in person when they come to town during their “Front Porch Singin’ Tour” on September 9^th, at the Viterbo Fine Arts Center. Sterban promises that you will hear old familiars like Bobbie Sue, American Made and, of course, Elvira. Sterban explains, “You know, whenever we play anywhere, whenever we come to town, you can count on the fact that Elvira will be on the show. You can count on the fact that you’ll hear me do Giddy-up and Oom Papa Oom Papa, mow mow. That is the law. And it’s some of the best fun I have to look out in the audience and see most of the men trying to sing that part along with me.”

Tickets are on sale now and can be had on the Viterbo Website.

You can listen to my interview with Richard, below

A historic country music group will perform in La Crosse next month when the Oak Ridge Boys make a stop at the Viterbo University Fine Arts Center while on their Front Porch Singin’ Tour.

With accolades that include nine Grammys, two American Music Awards and a place in the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, the Oak Ridge Boys have been singing together for 50 years.

Known for shows that emit high-energy, the Oak Ridge Boys will perform many songs from their gold and platinum albums like “Elvira,” “Bobbie Sue” and “Dream On” while also sharing songs from their latest album, “Front Porch Singin.’”

Bass singer for the band Richard Sterban, who celebrated his 50th year with the band in October, said the group’s longevity comes from more than just successful albums.

“The relationship between us is a very important factor. Each guy in our group is different and brings something different to the table,” Sterban said. “I think we all realized that we needed each other, so we learned to pull together as a team, as a true brotherhood. And, over the years, we became the very best of friends.”

The group that eventually became the Oak Ridge Boys was founded in 1943 as the Georgia Clodhoppers in Knoxville, Tennessee, and sang Southern gospel music for staff members and their families during World War II at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

After singing there so often, the group changed their name to the Oak Ridge Quartet before eventually changing it to the Oak Ridge Boys and focusing on country music. In the mid-1960s the band’s current members started to join with Duane Allen on lead vocals and William Lee Golden singing baritone.

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Then in the early-1970s, the group’s two other current members joined with Sterban on the bass line followed by Joe Bonsall on tenor.

Sterban said the group’s history is important and shared when they are on stage.

“We have a history like no other act, and that’s something that kind of propels us on,” Sterban said. “We also love the creative process — going to the studio and recording new music. It puts new life and new energy into us.”

Since the group was not able to perform during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sterban said he and his fellow members are “champing at the bit” to get back on stage and make up for lost time.

“When you walk out onto the stage and immediately the people go crazy, if you’re an entertainer, you get a feeling that’s hard to describe but makes you want to do the best you possibly can for the audience,” Sterban said. “I think one of the most gratifying things to us is that we are, I think, passed down from generation to generation.”

Sterban said the mixture of both a young and older audience shows the impact the group’s music has had.

“We are really excited about coming up to La Crosse. We have a lot of fans and made a lot of friends in the area over the years,” Sterban said. “In general, it’s going to be a great night of country music.”

It takes a special person to dedicate his life’s work to the memory of his late wife. But that’s what Oak Ridge native Joe Cooper Rolfe has done by creating and developing Starr Homeplace Heritage and Cultural Center.

“My wife was Starr Marie Rives from Cumming, Georgia.” He explained, “Not only was she the love of my life (I found love at the ripe old age of 35), but she was a very talented artist who studied at the Ringling Art School in Florida.”

Very much a free spirit, just a creative and just a fun person, she passed away very suddenly from complications of diabetes in the fall of 2002. Devastated at his loss, Rolfe was determined that she be remembered for her creativeness, her artistic abilities and generally for her love of life.

In 2003 Rolfe began Starr Homeplace, as a memorial to both Starr and to his parents, Jim and Isabel Rolfe.

“My hope then and is still, that it be a place that nurtures creativity and quality craftsmanship of many types to flourish,” He said.

Starr Homeplace is located on Louisiana 133 North (Old Mer Rouge Road) just outside the town of Oak Ridge on property that was purchased by Rolfe’s maternal ancestors, the Coopers, in the 1840s. Another branch of the family, the DeHarts, came to the area (then Ouachita County) in the 1790s. The Rolfe family didn’t arrive until the 1890s. They lived in a large plantation home a mile south of Starr Homeplace where the Cooper Rolfe gateposts still marks the spot.

“Sadly, that home was destroyed by fire in 1968,” noted Rolfe, “but we have moved four of the outbuildings associated with it which are now part of Starr Homeplace.”

Rolfe’s family home, which was built by his father, is now his home and also serves double duty as the Starr Homeplace office, but also as a meeting and gathering place for groups. His father, also named Joe, started building the house in 1952.

“We moved into it in 1957, thought it was still not finished,” Rolfe said. His father continued to work on the house until the mid-70s. “As I have grown older I understand and appreciate what a great accomplishment building such a home, completely alone was and is.”

Rolfe attended school in Oak Ridge from grades one through 12.

“It was the smallest school in the state, just over 100 students in 12 grades,” he recalled. “It must have been a pretty good school since its graduates have, for the most part, done fairly well.”

He later studied interior design at Louisiana Tech under Mary Moffett and from there operated an interior design firm called Designers Guild for more than 30 years. He still does some design work.

A self-avowed book-o-phile, He says his love of books and art began with a set of books, “My Book House,” his parents bought him when he was quite young.

He also recalls that the Oak Ridge librarian, Mrs. Reese, kept him supplied with good reading materials.

“I started working for Harry and Betty Stone at the Twin City Bookmark when I was 14 and a half. I worked there for eight years and some occasional stints after that,” he recalled fondly. “I think I took home more books than money. It was a very happy time in my life and I still keep in touch with the Stones. They were kind enough to donate the last of the store’s inventory for us to use for fundraising efforts at Starr Homeplace.”

Rolfe noted that he is interested in a lot of different artistic areas.

“The last creative thing I got involved with was crafted gourds. I still find them quite interesting but have not found a ready market for them here. I keep thinking that I will get back to doing watercolors but haven't put brush to paper in decades,” Rolfe said.

He also does a little blacksmithing in the blacksmith shop and designs things such as signage and whimsical items to enhance the site and the experience.

He is often asked when he decided to do the Starr Homeplace project.

“Beyond wanting to build a place to honor Starr and my parents, I can honestly say I never decided to have 19 buildings full of collections. It just happened to me a little bit at a time,” Rolfe said.

In addition to the extensive collection of tools that he inherited from his father and grandfather, other collections have been added, notably those of Charles Depoe, Bill Lattimer, Oren Robertson, Percy Hotard, and also some nice tools from Harry Stone. Cumulatively they make quite an impressive assembly of tools and equipment showing the many and varied skills these men had and the tools they had to work with, many handmade and quite inventive.

Because they are not, for the most part, fine collectable tools, they are able to allow them to be used and enjoyed by visitors and visitor-workers to Starr Homeplace.

He noted that his overriding hope is that Starr Homeplace will be used and enjoyed by more people.

“Although money to operate is always a problem, although we operate on a shoestring, and more funding would be great, but if we can get the people, especially families and children out here to visit to enjoy and appreciate what we have to offer we will be OK,” he said.

Starr Homeplace, staffed by a small cadre of loyal volunteers, is open for Community Days on the second Saturdays of April through October (except for the month of August) and there is usually a theme for the day. Especially popular is the twice-yearly Hammer In where professional and amateur blacksmith’s from the region meet and show off their skills, techniques and finished work.

An interesting and exciting project that Rolfe and a few volunteers are working on is the restoration of a vintage 20HP single cylinder Witte engine.

“Hopefully, it will be finished and operational at the Blacksmiths Hammer In next April, he said.

Although Starr Homeplace is his vocation in addition to his avocation, Rolfe does have several hobbies which take him away from the property for short stints: including hiking, backpacking, camping and canoeing when the opportunity arises.

“I occasionally take short road trips to visit friends and relatives, but I hope that I will be able to travel more in the future,” he said. “I would like to visit similar sites to ours for ideas and it will give me an opportunity to share what we are doing here at Starr Homeplace with others outside our local area.”

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. — Ellen Reid, a 36-year-old composer and sound artist originally from Oak Ridge, Tenn., who reportedly splits her time “between her two favorite cities” — Los Angeles and New York — continues to out-do herself.

And this time it's a doozie.

***

“Reid, in a word, has arrived,” says the LA Times. p r i s m by Reid has won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in music.

The Prize-winning work is described by pulitzer.org as “a bold new operatic work that uses sophisticated vocal writing and striking instrumental timbres to confront difficult subject matter — the effects of sexual and emotional abuse. Libretto by Roxie Perkins.”

Quoting the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater website, pulitzer.org goes on to state: “Locked away in a sterile room, a sickly child Bibi and her doting mother Lumee are each other's sole protectors from the unknown. When a mysterious illness lurking outside their door leaves Bibi unable to walk, her youthful curiosity begins to simmer and a seductive external existence can no longer be ignored.

“p r i s m, by Ellen Reid and Roxie Perkins, is a haunting, kaleidoscopic new work of opera-theatre that traverses the elasticity of memory after trauma. Composer Ellen Reid's music erupts with color, using choral and orchestral manipulation to deliver an eerily distinct sonic world.”

Reid's biography describes the 2001 Oak Ridge High School graduate as one of the most innovative artists of her generation. … “A composer and sound artist whose breadth of work spans opera, sound design, film scoring, ensemble and choral writing, she recently became the first composer to have works premiered by Los Angeles' four leading musical institutions — the Los Angeles Philharmonic, LA Opera, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and Los Angeles Master Chorale — all within one year.

“This season,” her biography continues, “Ellen presented her first opera — p r i s m — which opened to universal acclaim in sold-out runs on both the east and west coasts, as a part of New York's Prototype Festival and the LA Opera's Off Grand series.

“Upcoming highlights include a new work for the New York Philharmonic, and a collaboration with Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller on a sound installation for the LA Phil's Walt Disney Concert Hall. In the fall of 2019, Ellen begins a three-year appointment as creative advisor and composer-in-residence for Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.”

Reid's biography goes on to note that “Ellen was listed as one of Musical America's 30 Professionals of the Year in 2016 for her work with Luna Composition Lab, a mentorship program for young self-identified female, non-binary and gender non-conforming composers that she co-founded with composer Missy Mazzoli. (Reid) received her BFA from Columbia University and her MA from California Institute of the Arts. …”

Nominated as Pulitzer finalists in music for 2019 were Still by James Romig and Sustain by Andrew Norman. The jury included chair Scott Cantrell, classical music critic, Dallas, Texas; John V. Brown Jr., jazz program director and professor of the practice of music, Duke University; David Harrington, artistic director/violinist, Kronos Quartet; and Raymond J. Lustig, composer and instructor of composition, The Julliard School.

“It feels unreal — like I'm going to wake up,” Reid reportedly told the Los Angeles Times' arts and culture writer Deborah Vankin shortly after the Pulitzer announcement Monday.

In a National Public Radio interview with Tom Huizenga, Reid said of p r i s m, “We started working on the piece about five years ago, before the #MeToo movement, before there was kind of a shift in thinking about what it meant to be a survivor. And it felt really important. … There's something about the piece that makes people who haven't experienced sexual assault understand just a little bit more what it might be like.”

***

In late September/early October of 2013, The Oak Ridger reported that Ellen Reid, then 30 years old, was making a name for herself on the West Coast and in the national press.

At the time, the composer and sound artist from Oak Ridge was drawing attention from publications such as USA Today for her work on “Prometheus Bound,” an outdoor theater production in the Getty Villa in Malibu.

The “rarely performed play,” believed to be written in the 5th Century B.C. by Aeschylus, was being presented “live and al fresco” by the California Institute of the Arts' Center for New Performance and the Getty Museum in association with TransArts.

Reid was both recognized by USA Today and interviewed in a piece published by KCET Southern California Cultural Journalism. In the KCET article, Reid said performing outdoors proved challenging and described herself as a “musical agnostic … moved by many different types of music.”

Oak Ridger Karen Reid, who had recently returned from Los Angeles after seeing her daughter's show in Malibu, said “Prometheus Bound” provided the first opportunity for her to see classical Greek theater live “and it was elegant.” Meanwhile, the 2013 KCET article quoted the L.A. Weekly as stating that Ellen Reid's work “brims with uncanny invention.”

Darrell Richardson can be contacted at (865) 220-5510.

UBank is presenting its annual Good For Country Concert on Saturday, April 13 at the George H. Henderson, Jr., Expo Center in Lufkin, Texas.

For over 50 years, the Oak Ridge Boys have been topping the charts and entertaining crowds across the world. In September 2023, they announced that their next tour would be their last.

From 'American Made', 'Elvira', 'Bobbie Sue' and numerous other hits, the Oak Ridge Boys will be performing those and many others in Lufkin.

This Louisiana native is already a multi-platinum singer who has notched three No. 1 singles (“My Girl,” “Nobody,” and “New Truck”), as well as Top 5 hit “Hooked.”

With career streams exceeding 2 billion, Dylan Scott has provided tour support for Garth Brooks, Luke Bryan, and Chris Young, among others, cementing him as an in-demand live act.

Livin’ My Best Life, the new album from Scott, features fiery, #1 lead single “New Truck,” along with viral TikTok ballad, and current radio single, “Can’t Have Mine (Find You A Girl).”

Tickets go on sale on Friday, February 2 at 10 a.m. on Eventbrite. UBank has once again made it a point to make this concert affordable with $15 general admission tickets.

100% of event proceeds will go to the East Texas Food Bank. Over the last three years, UBank has been able to donate $60,000 through the Good for Country concert series.

Opening the show will be two local artists, Jackson Wendell, who opened last year for Scotty McCreery, and Cole Stephens will be taking the stage.

Doors for the show will open at 6:45 with the first artists set to appear at that time. The show starts at 7:30 with the Oak Ridge Boys, to be followed by Dylan Scott.

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