After 38 years, Statler Brothers pull off the road

After 38 years on the road, the Statler Brothers are calling it quits. After they play Salem, Va., today, they’ll retire from traveling as one of country music’s most successful quartets.

The group still plans to record, from its home base of Staunton, Va.

“We’ve been blessed,” says Harold Reid, one of the original members. “There’s a lot of people out there with more talent than us who have not been able to show what they could do.”

Phil Balsley, Lew DeWitt and Joe McDorman were the other original Statlers. Don Reid, Harold’s younger brother, replaced McDorman in the early 1960s, and Jimmy Fortune took over for the ailing DeWitt in the 1980s. DeWitt, who suffered from Crohn’s disease, died in 1990.

With hits such as “You Can’t Have Your Kate and Edith, Too,” “Carry Me Back” and “The Class of ‘57,” the Statlers toured two out of every three weeks at their peak in the 1970s and 1980s, produced their own cable TV show for several years in the 1990s and recorded more than 50 albums.