There’s impressive precision in the lyrics, the kind of sensitivity that the Statlers’ rapidly ascending singer-songwriter peers on the outlaw side of country would wear on their sleeves. It is, simply, two minutes and 42 seconds of description of a week in the life of an average secretary. This quietly tragic character study is one of the more unlikely singles in the Statler Brothers’ catalog. It’s fun and distinctive, a gendered lament that never devolves into unrepentant sexism and would sound great in any contemporary honky tonk. Yet a weird streak runs through much of their work, as in this sort-of nonsense song about women and their idiosyncrasies penned by the only actual brothers in the Statlers, Don and Harold. The Statlers touted their ability to heed country convention, exemplifying what they saw as a long-lost reverence for the genre’s tradition and roots. (The harmonies remain constant, even if the stylistic influences don’t.)Ĭlick to load video 19. The Statler Brothers were the CMA’s Vocal Group Of The Year from 1972 to 1980, a period that didn’t even encompass their biggest chart success in the early to mid-‘80s.īelow are The Statler Brothers’ 20 best songs, from hymns to bluegrass to rock and roll. But neither of those details kept them from turning their particular brand of gospel-tinged and pop-informed country music into a massive, decades-long success story, one rooted in the traditional Appalachian music of their tiny hometown, Staunton, Virginia.ĭon and Harold Reid (the actual brothers), Phil Balsley, and Lew DeWitt took their name from a tissue box and never looked back, first as Johnny Cash’s longtime opening act and backing vocalists – a smart inoculation against “Flowers On the Wall” making them a one-hit-wonder – and then as one of country’s most dominant vocal groups in the 1970s and 80s. The Statler Brothers are not biological kin, and none of them are named Statler.
0 kommentar(er)
