In late 1971, The Statler Brothers had a song on country radio called “You Can’t Go Home.” Written by Don Reid, it peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard country chart. It was not a disaster, but it was not the kind of record that changes a career.
The next one did. “Do You Remember These,” released by Mercury on March 11, 1972, climbed to No. 2 on Billboard’s Hot Country chart and went all the way to No. 1 on the Cash Box country survey. The group had gone from a single that told you that you can’t go home to a single that took you there anyway.
A song with no story at all
“Do You Remember These” was written by brothers Don Reid and Harold Reid with Larry Lee, and produced by Jerry Kennedy, who had signed the group to Mercury in 1969. It was recorded in November 1971.
What made it unusual was its shape. There is no plot, no love affair, no tragedy. It is a list song, a run of small things from childhood and adolescence in the late 1940s and 1950s: movie and radio figures, fashions, brand names, social gatherings, and the slang kids used. The title is a question, and the song simply keeps asking it.
The men singing it were not old. When they cut the record, Lew DeWitt was 33, Harold Reid and Phil Balsley were 32, and Don Reid was 26. They were four young men from Staunton, Virginia, and they were already singing about a world that had slipped away.
Bigger than the country chart
The song reached further than most Statler records of that era. Besides its No. 2 country peak, it hit No. 18 on Billboard’s Easy Listening chart, the only time the group ever appeared there, and bubbled just under the Hot 100 at No. 105. The whole thing runs two minutes and 53 seconds.
Don Reid once explained the group’s approach in plain terms. As quoted by The Spokesman-Review in 1998, he said:
“The songs we write are an extension of what we believe and feel.”
In the same interview, he added that whole families came to their shows because “we’re singing about things they know about.”
The turn that followed
“Do You Remember These” became a turning point. Later that same year, The Statler Brothers released “The Class of ’57,” another Reid brothers song, this time about a high school class fifteen years after graduation. It reached No. 6 and won the Grammy for Best Country Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group. The group also began a six-year run as CMA Vocal Group of the Year in 1972.
Looking back became part of who they were. “Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott” came in 1973, “The Movies” in 1977, and “Child of the Fifties” in 1983. In 1991 they launched a Fifties-inspired variety series on The Nashville Network. In 1998, a Spokesman-Review headline said they had sacrificed hipness “for the opportunity to remain innocent and honest.”
Who is left to answer the question
The four voices on that 1972 record are not all here anymore. Lew DeWitt left the group in 1982 because of Crohn’s disease and died in 1990. Harold Reid died on April 24, 2020, at 80. Jerry Kennedy, the producer who shaped so many of their records, died in Nashville on February 11, 2026, at 85.
The Statler Brothers came off the road in 2002 and were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2008. Don Reid and Phil Balsley, according to recent reports, still live in Staunton.
The song still asks the same question it asked in 1972. It is just harder to hear it now without counting who is missing.