In November 1981, after finishing a tour in California, Lew DeWitt was admitted to the hospital. The original tenor of the Statler Brothers, the man who wrote “Flowers on the Wall,” told the group he would need an extended recovery. Then he did something unusual. He recommended the singer who should fill his place: a young Virginia tenor named Jimmy Fortune.
It was meant to be temporary. It turned out to be the beginning of the end of Lew DeWitt’s time with the group he had sung with since his teens.
Years of Pain Behind the Harmony
Lew DeWitt’s stomach trouble went back years. Life on the road made it worse, and his attacks of pain sometimes forced the Statler Brothers to cancel or postpone shows. While on tour in the mid-1960s, he was diagnosed with regional enteritis, a form of Crohn’s disease, and had surgery.
He was advised that stress could trigger his symptoms, so Harold Reid, Don Reid and Phil Balsley took over his nonmusical duties in the band. Onstage, he still sang the high line. Offstage, his partners carried the rest so he would not have to.
The Singer at the Ski Resort
Lew DeWitt had heard Jimmy Fortune sing at a ski resort in Virginia. Jimmy Fortune later recalled that the two of them sang together a little that night, and that he did not expect anything to come of it. When Lew needed surgery that winter, he put Jimmy’s name forward as a fill-in.
After an audition in Nashville, Jimmy Fortune played his first show with the Statler Brothers on January 28, 1982, in Savannah, Georgia.
Coming Back to Finish The Legend Goes On
Lew DeWitt was not ready to walk away. In April 1982, he briefly returned to help the group finish its new album. The title was The Legend Goes On.
On June 7, 1982, he appeared with the Statler Brothers for the last time, as the group hosted the Music City News Awards. His symptoms returned. Late that June, he told the others that retiring from the group was his best option, and Jimmy Fortune became the permanent tenor.
Fans heard the news officially in Staunton, at the group’s annual Happy Birthday U.S.A. Fourth of July concert, the hometown celebration the Statlers had started back in 1970.
What Came After
Lew DeWitt kept singing on his own terms. He moved to the Waynesboro area, worked a lighter schedule with his Star City Band, and released two solo albums, On My Own in 1985 and Here to Stay in 1986. In 1989, with his health failing, he retired from music.
He died on August 15, 1990, at his home near Waynesboro, of heart and kidney disease. He was 52.
Jimmy Fortune, the fill-in, stayed with the Statler Brothers for 21 years, until the group retired in 2002. In 2008, when the Country Music Hall of Fame inducted the Statler Brothers, both tenors were on the list: Lew DeWitt and the man he had recommended from that hospital stay.