On February 12, 2008, the Country Music Association announced four new members of the Country Music Hall of Fame: Emmylou Harris, Tom T. Hall, the late Ernest “Pop” Stoneman and the Statler Brothers. By then the Statlers had not sung a show together in more than five years. Their last concert had been on October 26, 2002, at the Salem Civic Center in Virginia. And the man who wrote “Flowers on the Wall,” the song that first made them famous, had been dead for 17 years.
A February morning in Nashville
Harold Reid, Don Reid, Phil Balsley and Jimmy Fortune came to the Hall of Fame in Nashville for the announcement and spoke to the crowd after their names were read. Don Reid, the group’s lead singer, said they had never expected to be there.
“We always looked at the Hall of Fame as a place where our heroes were.”
It had been 43 years since “Flowers on the Wall” reached No. 2 on the country chart and No. 4 on the pop chart. In between, the group had won CMA Vocal Group of the Year nine times, six years running from 1972 to 1977 and again in 1979, 1980 and 1984. They had three Grammy Awards. In the 1990s they hosted the top-rated weekly show on The Nashville Network.
The group that never moved to Music City
The Statlers recorded and did business in Nashville, but they never made it their home. They lived in Staunton, Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley town where the group began as a high school quartet in 1955. In 1980 they bought and renovated their old elementary school, Beverley Manor, and turned it into the Statler Complex, with offices, a small museum and an auditorium. Every Fourth of July for a quarter century, starting in 1970, they staged Happy Birthday U.S.A. in Staunton, a free hometown concert and celebration whose proceeds went to local charities.
The tenor who wrote “Flowers on the Wall”
Lewis Calvin DeWitt was born on March 12, 1938, in Roanoke County, Virginia. His family moved to Staunton while he was still in grade school, and there he became friends with Phil Balsley, Joe McDorman and Harold Reid. The four of them sang together as the Four Star Quartet starting in 1955. Don Reid later replaced McDorman, and the lineup of Harold, Don, Phil and Lew went on the road with Johnny Cash in 1964.
Lew sang tenor, played guitar and wrote “Flowers on the Wall,” which the group cut in March 1965. The record helped them win their first two Grammys, for Best Contemporary Performance by a Group and Best New Country and Western Artist.
The illness behind the harmony
For years Lew lived with a stomach ailment that life on the road made worse. In the mid-1960s, while the group was touring, doctors diagnosed regional enteritis, a form of Crohn’s disease, and he had surgery. His attacks sometimes forced the Statlers to cancel or postpone shows, and the other three took over his business duties because stress could bring the symptoms back.
In November 1981, after a tour of California, Lew went into the hospital. He suggested a young Virginia singer named Jimmy Fortune as his temporary replacement, and Fortune played his first show with the group on January 28, 1982, in Savannah, Georgia. Lew came back that April to help finish the album The Legend Goes On. On June 7, 1982, he appeared with the Statlers for the last time, at the Music City News Awards show in Nashville.
Later that month his symptoms returned, and he told the others he was retiring. Fortune became the permanent tenor, the group’s first lineup change in 18 years. Fans heard the news at that summer’s Happy Birthday U.S.A. concert in Staunton.
On his own
Lew did not stop singing. He moved to the Waynesboro area, formed the Star City Band and played a lighter schedule, including a yearly appearance at Waynesboro’s Summer Extravaganza beginning in 1984. He released two solo albums, On My Own in 1985 and Here to Stay in 1986, before retiring from music in 1989.
He died on August 15, 1990, at his home near Waynesboro, of heart and kidney disease brought on by complications of Crohn’s. He was 52. In 1992 the city renamed a stretch of road Lew DeWitt Boulevard.
The man Lew chose
Jimmy Fortune, born on March 11, 1955, in Williamsburg, Virginia, did more than fill the empty spot. He wrote three No. 1 hits for the group, “Elizabeth,” “My Only Love” and “Too Much on My Heart,” and later “More Than a Name on a Wall,” their final Top Ten single in 1989. He stayed until the Statlers left the road in 2002.
June 29, 2008
The formal induction came on a Sunday at the Hall of Fame, in a two-hour ceremony shared with Tom T. Hall. Vince Gill, Amy Grant and the Jordanaires sang the opening hymn. Reba McEntire, Dailey & Vincent and Grandstaff, the duo of Harold’s son Wil Reid and Don’s son Langdon Reid, performed in honor of the Statlers. Brenda Lee presented their medallion.
Five names went into the Hall that night: Harold Reid, Don Reid, Phil Balsley, Jimmy Fortune and Lew DeWitt. Harold summed up the honor in a few words.
“It wraps up everything you did.”
The four surviving Statlers also sang together that night, six years after they had retired. Singing the tenor part was Jimmy Fortune, the man Lew DeWitt had picked himself.