On Saturday night, October 26, 2002, the Statler Brothers walked onto the stage of the Salem Civic Center in Salem, Virginia, for the last concert of their touring life. About an hour and a half later they walked off for good. The final song of the night was “Amazing Grace,” the first song the group had ever sung together.
“No one is sick”
The decision had been public since January 2002, when Billboard reported that the group would stop touring at the end of the year. Don Reid, the lead singer, said all four of them were looking forward to kicking back and sleeping late.
The Statlers had won three Grammy Awards and nine CMA vocal group trophies, and their weekly show had been the top-rated program on The Nashville Network for its entire run. On the farewell tour, Don explained the decision more than once. At a September stop at Powers Auditorium in Youngstown, Ohio, he put it plainly.
No one is sick and no one is mad.
They wanted to cut back and spend more time with their families. They had been on the road since 1964, when they joined Johnny Cash’s touring show, and they had kept their home and their office in Staunton, Virginia, the whole time. The second-to-last date was at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville, Alabama, on October 24. Two nights later came Salem.
A sold-out night close to home
The Salem show sold out in less than 90 minutes. Nearly 7,000 people filled the arena, most of them gray-haired, many of them dressed in their Sunday clothes. Tour buses unloaded hundreds of older fans outside. Vendors sold the commemorative insert the Staunton News Leader had printed for the occasion.
The stage was modest, set against the back wall with a huge American flag behind it. When the house lights went down at 7:30, a spotlight found a flag and a recording of the Statlers singing the national anthem played through the arena. Tara Lynn, who had opened for the group for four years, sang first. The band’s guitarist read a letter from President George W. Bush sending greetings to everyone gathered in Salem for the final Statler Brothers concert.
Then Jimmy Dean, in a blue blazer and a white cowboy hat, brought them out: Harold Reid, Don Reid, Phil Balsley and Jimmy Fortune. They opened with “Do You Remember These.”
The people in the seats
Throughout the night, fans walked down to the stage with bouquets and small gifts. Many of them had history with the group that went back decades. Edra Green had come from Kansas City with her husband, Danny. She said they had been going to Statler shows since the 1960s, when the group was still touring with Johnny Cash, and she was holding a record the brothers had signed for her in 1976.
One of the oldest people in the building was Elsa Brinkley, 96, who had followed the group since its beginning. She told the Associated Press why she understood the decision.
They are just like the rest of us, they’re getting older.
Much of the audience was in tears before the night was over.
The thank-yous
The set was the show fans knew: “The Class of ’57,” “Flowers on the Wall,” a gospel medley, the hits that had carried them for decades. Harold Reid, the bass singer and the group’s comedian, drew one of the biggest laughs of the night complaining about how hot it was inside his suit and tie.
Then Don read a list of thank-yous. He thanked their managers and soundmen, their bus drivers, their wives and their mothers. He also thanked Lew DeWitt, the original tenor, who had written “Flowers on the Wall.” DeWitt had left the group in 1982 after years of illness and had died in 1990. Once more, the group told the crowd that nobody was sick. They were just tired.
Back to “Amazing Grace”
The Statler Brothers had started in the 1950s as a teenage gospel quartet in Staunton, singing in local churches long before anyone paid them. Through the name changes, the years with Johnny Cash and the change of tenor in 1982, gospel stayed part of the act. Their album that summer, Amen, was a gospel record.
So the last song in Salem was not a hit. It was “Amazing Grace,” the same hymn the group had first sung together.
When it ended, the four men left the stage. There was no encore, and the crowd did not call for one.
After the last bow
The group’s museum and gift shop in Staunton, the Statler Complex, was set to close a few days later, on Halloween. Gaither Music later released recordings from the farewell concert. The Statler Brothers never went back on the road as a group.
In 2008 they were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Harold Reid died in Staunton on April 24, 2020, at 80, after a long battle with kidney failure. Don Reid and Phil Balsley stayed in Staunton, and Jimmy Fortune went on singing as a solo artist.