Growing up, music was a constant. And The Statler Brothers were a part of that musical constant. Phil, Lew, Don, and Harold’s country quartet were often on the turntable at home and the family truck’s tape deck. As I perused through vinyl today, I stopped at The Best of The Statler Bros. This 1975 release contains a few of the greatest country songs ever recorded: “Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott”, “Do You Remember These”, “The Class of ‘57”, “I’ll Go to My Grave Loving You”, and “Flowers on the Wall”. The best songs on this greatest hits compilation are “Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott” and “Flowers on the Wall”. My younger brother and I loved “Flowers on the Wall” and used to sing along together every time we heard it, at home or in public. My little brother always wanted to sing Harold’s bass line “ Smokin’ cigarettes and watchin’ Captain. Kangaroo” and could never do it without laughing and a solitary nostril flare. I miss that nostril flare and next time we are together, I’ll coax that flare out of him! Perhaps the most haunting lyrics on the album belong to “The Class of ‘57” and “Pictures”. Melodic remembrances of who we used to be with the hopes and dreams of the innocent.
In 1981, my parents took the entire family to see The Statler Brothers in concert at the St. Joseph Missouri Civic Arena. Brenda Lee opened the show and I remember thinking then that I just had the honor of listening to a country music legend! When The Statlers hit the stage, they did all the hits we wanted to hear and my brother and I sang right along with them on “Flowers on the Wall”, complete with the brotherly nostril flare. After the last song of the night, Harold announced that if anyone wanted to stick around after the show, they would be hanging around to meet fans and sign autographs. My mother bought me a Statler Brothers Souvenir Book which all four members signed. And Brenda Lee signed the back of my book, gave my little brother a kiss on the cheek, and she then signed his trucker hat…what a night! This did not require a $500 -$1,000 VIP experience ticket or pass, they hung out with fans to say “thank you” as part of the entire live show experience. I know we live in a different world today, but wouldn’t it be nice if the concert going fan could have that kind of experience without draining their back account? Ticket prices alone are high enough, but these days if you want that one-on-one experience with your favorite artist, it will cost extra. And that money only buys the fan about 30 seconds, a fist bump, and, if you’re lucky, a selfie with the artist. Even the selfie is becoming non-existent as fans are now huddled around the artist for one big group photo. Maybe that could be the sequel song to “Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott” and it could be titled “Whatever Happened to Class Acts and Fan Appreciation”. That Statler Brothers show will always be one of my treasured experiences and I relive it every time the needle slowly alights on that vinyl and I start counting flowers on the wall.
© 2025 Gregory Vessar. A Thousand Miles from Kansas. All Rights Reserved.
Meanwhile in 1975:
Three of the top songs were “Love Will Keep Us Together” by Captain & Tennille (the number one song of 1975), “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” by John Denver and “Rhinestone Cowboy” by Glen Campbell. A few of the top stories included the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War, the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia and killed nearly two million people, SS the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior (Gordon Lightfoot wrote a song about it a year later), The Apollo 18 and Soyuz 19 spacecraft rendezvoused and docked in space and became the first crewed international space mission, Monty Python and the Holy Grail came out in theaters, and Junko Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest
A Thousand Miles from Kansas 