On April 24, 2026, Gaither Music Group released American Songbook: Country Classics and Gospel Favorites by Wilson Fairchild, the duo of cousins Wil and Langdon Reid. That date carries weight in Staunton, Virginia. Six years earlier, on April 24, 2020, Wil’s father, Harold Reid, the bass voice of the Statler Brothers, died after a long battle with kidney failure.
The song at the center of this story is “I’ll Go to My Grave Loving You.” On the DVD and TV special, Wil and Langdon sing it with their own sons, Jack and Davis Reid. That makes three generations of one family on one song, and the song itself goes back to both brothers who started it all.
A Love Song With Gospel Roots
Don Reid wrote “I’ll Go to My Grave Loving You,” and the Statler Brothers released it in May 1975. It climbed to No. 3 on the Billboard country singles chart and reached No. 1 on Canada’s RPM country chart.
Here’s a part even some longtime fans may not know: Don built the song on an earlier gospel number by his big brother, Harold, called “He Went to the Cross Loving You.” Harold’s song was about a sacred kind of love, and Don turned that idea into a vow between a man and a woman. So when the Reid sons and grandsons sing it today, they are singing something both brothers had a hand in.
Wilson Fairchild had already recorded Harold’s original. “He Went to the Cross Loving You” is one of the tracks on their tribute album Songs Our Dads Wrote, a collection of Harold and Don Reid compositions.
Generation One: Ten Dollars for the Privilege
Harold Reid helped form the Four Star Quartet in Staunton in 1955. His younger brother Don came in a few years later. Don has said he was about 14 when he joined, which puts it around 1959. Official histories put it a little later: the Country Music Hall of Fame says Don had replaced original member Joe McDorman by 1961, and other accounts say 1960 or 1962.
In those years nobody was getting rich. According to Virginia Living, the group spent years playing around Staunton asking ten dollars a show, and often ended up paying ten dollars themselves just for the chance to play.
That changed in 1964, when they joined Johnny Cash’s road show. Three Grammys and a Hall of Fame plaque later, Harold was still singing bass and Don still singing lead when the group retired in 2002.
Generation Two: Two Cousins, Two Middle Names
Wil Reid, Harold’s son, and Langdon Reid, Don’s son, started writing songs together as teenagers. They formed a duo in the 1990s, first called Grandstaff. When announcers kept getting that name wrong, they could have switched to “The Reids.” Instead they took their middle names, Wilson and Fairchild.
Their fathers didn’t make it easy on them, and the boys were grateful for that. In a 2014 interview, Wil remembered that the two Statlers pushed them to sharpen their pencils and craft their songs:
“They wouldn’t let us settle for anything.” — Wil Reid, quoted by uDiscover Music
The training paid off inside the family first. Don Reid has said on PBS that Langdon, Wil, and Don’s other son, Debo, wrote a lot of songs for later Statler albums.
In 2007 the cousins wrote a tribute called “The Statler Brothers Song.” When the Statlers were formally inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame on June 29, 2008, the sons were there to sing for their fathers at the Medallion Ceremony.
The Night the Fireworks Went Up
Harold Reid died at home in Staunton on Friday evening, April 24, 2020. He was 80.
For 25 years, the Statler Brothers had ended their free Fourth of July “Happy Birthday USA” concerts at Gypsy Hill Park with fireworks. A writer who lived near the Reids recalled in the Wilmington News Journal that around 10:30 that night, fireworks lit the sky near Harold’s home, Boxley Farm. The column doesn’t say who set them off. It does record what Don said quietly after the last glow faded:
“He has taken a big piece of our hearts with him.” — Don Reid
Generation Three: From a West Virginia Gig to the Opry
Jack and Davis Reid are the sons of Wil and Langdon, which makes them grandsons of Harold and Don. Like their fathers, they are cousins, not brothers, and both were born and raised in Staunton. They now perform as Jack and Davis Reid and have released two albums of original songs, the latest being Don’t Wanna Talk About It.
Asked once how they got into music, Jack Reid told the Augusta Free Press, “We’ve always been pulled toward it.”
That pull took them to Nashville this fall. According to Staunton’s News Leader, the Josie Music Awards had invited the cousins to present an award at the Grand Ole Opry. A month before the show, fans started messaging them that they had been nominated for Country Duo of the Year. On September 19 they played a show in Franklin, West Virginia, drove straight to Nashville, and arrived around 6 a.m. Later that day, standing backstage and waiting to present Song of the Year, they heard their own names called. It was their first award ever.
Jack summed it up with a joke his grandfathers might have enjoyed: “We were just happy to go to the Opry and get catering.” Their fathers were on the road in Texas that night. The cousins texted their moms first.
What We Know, and What We Don’t
Gaither Music Group’s announcement gives the April 24 release date. It doesn’t mention any anniversary, and no one in the family has said publicly whether the date was chosen on purpose. Maybe it was a tribute. Maybe it was simply a Friday on a release calendar. Either way, the dates line up.
Back Where It Started
Wilson Fairchild has since brought back Staunton’s Fourth of July celebration in Gypsy Hill Park, now called Happy Birthday America. On July 4, 2026, Jack and Davis Reid performed there alongside their fathers and longtime Statler tenor Jimmy Fortune, in the same park where the Statler Brothers once sang for their hometown every summer.
Two brothers once paid ten dollars for the right to sing. Their grandsons have now been handed a trophy on the Opry stage. Somewhere in between sits one love song, written by Don and built on Harold’s faith, that the whole family can still sing together.
You can find “I’ll Go to My Grave Loving You” on the Statler Brothers’ The Best of the Statler Brothers. The three-generation performance is on Wilson Fairchild’s American Songbook DVD and TV special; details are on Gaither Music Group’s release page. Give both a listen, then tell us: where were you the first time you heard it?
Sources
Gaither Music Group, “Wilson Fairchild Release American Songbook” (April 24, 2026); The News Leader / Yahoo, “Staunton’s Jack and Davis Reid honored with award at Grand Ole Opry” (October 5, 2026); Variety and Rolling Stone, Harold Reid obituaries (April 2020); Wilmington News Journal, “R.I.P. Brother Reid, Brother Statler” (April 28, 2020); Virginia Living, “Remembering the Statler Brothers”; Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Statler Brothers biography; BMI, “Tom T. Hall and The Statler Brothers Join the Country Music Hall of Fame” (2008); uDiscover Music, “Wilson Fairchild Follow The Statler Family Line”; Augusta Free Press, Jack and Davis Reid YMCA benefit concert; PBS, Write Around the Corner: Don Reid; Wikipedia, “I’ll Go to My Grave Loving You” (Billboard and RPM chart data).