The Statler Brothers were an all-male, country music quartet. They became prominent in the 1960s as backing-singers for Johnny Cash before performing as a stand-alone group from the 1970s onwards. Originally consisting of bass vocalist Harold Reid, Don Reid, Phil Balsley and Tenor singer Lew Dewitt, they released a number of hits in the following decades until 1981 when Lew Dewitt quit due to declining health. Lew Dewitt died in 1990 of Crohn’s disease at the age of 52. He was replaced by Jimmy Fortune who remained in the group until their retirement as a musical act in 2002.
In 1972, The Statler brothers released an album entitled Country Music then and now. One of the songs on this album, The Class of ’57, became a popular hit for the group. The song is filled with nostalgic references of a graduating high school class from 1957. Each member sings a verse, and each verse chronicles different classmates, comparing what dreams and ambitions they’d had to what they actually achieved in adult life, with lyrics such as ‘Charlie took a job with Ford, Jo took Freddie’s wife, Charlotte took a millionaire, and Freddie took his life’. The song was released 15 years after their original tenor singer Lew Dewitt graduated high school, so I suppose the song was loosely based on his experiences. As 2025 marks 16 years since my wife and I graduated high school, we decided to play our rendition of the song.
I play guitar and bass and usually work out songs by ear. My wife plays piano, and is much better than me, being able to read music and had played all through her primary and high school years. Music for me has always been very casual. I have attempted singing, but not very well. I can sing in the right key, but that’s about it. Every so often, I show my wife some chords of a song, usually whatever I happen to be listening to at the time which, most recently, was ‘The Class of ’57’.
With practise we played through the chords of the song, from intro right through to the key change and conclusion of the song. I succeeded in singing the lyrics. As it is our version, I changed some of the lyrics to be more specific to our lives with regards to the line ‘Charlotte took a millionaire and Freddie took his life’. Tragically, there is a relevant example that my wife remembers from her high school days. Long before the current social media ban for under 16s in response to an increase of teen suicides related to bullying, one of my wife’s classmates committed suicide because of bullying. This was during Year 12. So when the line in the song begins ‘Charlotte took a millionaire’, I simply change it to the name of the girl from my wife’s class. I changed it as a little tribute to her. There’s also a line, where Harold Reid is singing, and he says the first name of his real-life wife ‘Linda married Sonny, Brenda married me’. So I changed Brenda to my wife’s first name.
In 2020, bass singer Harold Reid died at the age of 80. I did a search on YouTube and found Jimmy Fortune (their second Tenor singer) performing recent versions of various Statler Brothers songs with other musicians. And there are the typical clips of performances and interviews of the Statler Brothers which are readily available on the internet. ‘The Class of ’57’ is a good reflective song about how lives can change over time. The themes of high school ambitions versus the reality of adult life and what people have actually achieved, really come through well. It can relate to anyone, of any age, not just if they graduated in 1957. So, this is why I really like this song, and worked it out, to play our rendition of it, relevant to us.
Image: en.wikipedia.org
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