For the last few years of his life, Harold Reid was fighting kidney failure. On the evening of April 24, 2020, the bass singer of the Statler Brothers died at his home in Staunton, Virginia, surrounded by his wife and children. He was 80.
He died in the same town where it all began. He had never really left. And in the weeks before the end, he was still doing the thing he did best: making his friends laugh.
A last visit, and a lot of laughing
Jimmy Fortune, the Statlers’ tenor, said Harold had been fighting kidney failure for a few years. A few weeks before Harold died, Fortune got to talk with him one more time.
“We talked about the things we really missed, but reminisced in a good way and we laughed a lot.”
After that, Fortune said, Harold’s health kept going downhill, and it took a turn for the worse in the last week. Everyone knew it was coming. “You’re just never ready,” Fortune said.
It’s fitting that one of the last stories about Harold Reid has laughter in it. Fortune put it simply when he remembered his old friend on stage: “I never got tired of watching Harold get up and just act crazy and get laugh after laugh after laugh. He had people eating out of the palm of his hand.”
The deep voice, and the funny one
Harold Reid was born in Augusta County, Virginia, on August 21, 1939. He helped found the gospel quartet that became the Statler Brothers, with his younger brother Don Reid, Phil Balsley and Lew DeWitt. Only Harold and Don were actual brothers. Nobody was named Statler.
The name came from Harold. He spotted a box of Statler tissues in a hotel room, and that was that. “We might have been called the Kleenex Brothers,” he often said.
The group sang backup for Johnny Cash for nearly 10 years and won a Grammy for “Flowers on the Wall” in 1965. But Harold Reid gave the Statlers something most vocal groups never had. He gave them comedy.
He was the leader of their alter ego, Lester “Roadhog” Moran and His Cadillac Cowboys, a hopeless small-town radio band that first showed up on the 1972 album Country Music Then and Now. Two years later, Lester got a whole album of his own, Alive at the Johnny Mack Brown High School. According to the Country Music Hall of Fame, the old Roadhog was later retired and, by the last report, was “recovering from an autopsy.”
One last bow in Salem
In 2002, after nearly four decades on the road, the Statlers decided to stop touring and spend more time with their families. Their final concert, billed as “A Final Bow,” was set for October 26, 2002, at the Salem Civic Center in Virginia.
Tickets sold out six months ahead, in less than 90 minutes. Nearly 7,000 fans came, most of them gray-haired. The Associated Press reported that much of the audience was in tears by the end.
Then Harold Reid went home.
The town he never left
Harold and his wife, Brenda, raised their family in Staunton. The Statlers ran their business from there. Starting in 1970, they also gave their hometown a free Fourth of July concert, Happy Birthday USA, that sometimes drew as many as 100,000 people to a town that small.
After the farewell show, Harold spent almost 18 more years at home. “Almost 18 years of being with his family, to spend time with his children, and his grandchildren and his wife,” Jimmy Fortune said. “I mean, what a blessing.”
Imagine walking away from all that applause and finding out home was enough. For Harold Reid, it seems it was.
Goodbye, Harold
Even the obituary had a little of his humor in it. “In lieu of casseroles and flowers,” it read, memorial gifts could go to the fund at Olivet Presbyterian Church.
Because of the pandemic, there was no big public farewell. Instead, the city of Staunton held a small wreath-laying ceremony at the Statler Brothers Tribute monument in the Wharf area. Brenda, his wife of 59 years, was there with the family. City Council members stood apart, socially distanced. The city’s statement ended with five plain words: “Thank you, Harold, for everything.”
The Statler Brothers said goodbye in their own statement: “His singing, his songwriting and his comedy made generations happy. He has taken a piece of our hearts with him.”
Did you ever see the Statlers live, or catch one of Lester “Roadhog” Moran’s broadcasts? Share your memories of Harold Reid in the comments.