Story by Chris Graham
With AFP Audio
It was a cover of Roy Orbison’s “Crying” that landed Jimmy Fortune in the Statler Brothers. That’s why a cover of “Crying” is in Fortune’s new CD, “Windows,” which is being launched this weekend with a release party in Harrisonburg.
“Lew Dewitt heard me sing that song at Wintergreen. When he heard me that night singing, he came up and told me that he loved my voice,” said Fortune, whose new CD is his first country-music CD since 2002’s “When One Door Closes.”
A door opened for Fortune in 1982 when Dewitt recommended to his fellow Statlers that the tenor who he’d heard crooning “Crying” be hired as his fill-in while he took a hiatus to combat the Crohn’s Disease that would eventually take his life.
“That was a window in my life that I tried to take advantage of and something that made a difference in my life. You don’t realize it sometimes until you look back and see the things that you do, how your life is laid out in these little places where you could have turned in different direction, but you decided to go this way, and this happened,” Fortune said.
“That’s the reason this song is on there, because I was the first name out of his mouth,” Fortune said.
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Jimmy Fortune discusses “Windows” (2:30)
[audio:http://media.libsyn.com/media/thenewdominion01/AFP_Jimmy_Fortune.mp3]
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You get an idea of the thought process behind “Windows.” “The whole premise of the album is the windows in our life. Some of them are open sometimes, and some of them are closed, for reasons only God knows. We try to take advantage of the opportunities that we have, the windows that are open to us,” Fortune said.
Fortune will be signing copies of the new CD, which features 12 songs in all, 10 written or co-written by Fortune, at the Harrisonburg Auto Mall on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. A series of TV spots that Fortune has done over the years for the Auto Mall has opened another window for him.
“Those commercials up there in Virgina took off like gangbusters. I’m like, What in the world is going on?” Fortune said by phone from his home in Nashville. “I started doing those car commercials just as a kind of a little side thing, and next thing I know, I’ve got all these little kids coming up and going, Come on down and get you a car. Kids just love it.
“You never know what you’re going to do that’s going to impact somebody,” Fortune said.
You couldn’t predict, either, where Fortune would be post-Statlers. The group announced its retirement in 2002, but Fortune, then still just 47, wasn’t ready to hang up the guitar strap for good just yet.
“I thought after the Statlers retired that I would probably go into writing more full-time, and I would probably do some songwriter nights and things here and there. But it’s gotten so that the more the songwriting is getting out there, the more people want to see me out there in these places, and the more demand out there,” said Fortune, whose solo career has included four CDs altogether, including 2004’s gospel collection “I Believe” and the 2006 release “Feels Like Christmas.”
“When I came here, I had such respect in the business, from the Statler Brothers era and from what they did in the music business. People respect the Statler Brothers so much that it really helped me come into this town and be able to knock on doors and say, Here I am, and write with these great writers. It opened a lot of doors for me,” Fortune said.
And Fortune is trying to open another door/window for himself. People ask him all the time about a possible Statlers reunion.
“I’m always after the guys. I’m always on them. I never let off of them about doing something,” Fortune said. “I told them that the doors always open for me if they want to do something, and they know that. But so far, they haven’t bit on anything yet.
“We sing a few songs at Christmastime together, we try to get together. And I keep up with the guys. They seem to be doing great and everything. When we get together, we reminisce about old times. I can’t believe it’s been seven years, but it is old times now. I can’t believe it’s been that long,” Fortune said.
“I’m so thankful to the Statler Brothers for what they did – Harold, Phil, Don and Lew – for what they did for me, that I will never, ever, ever forget it. We will continue to be brothers, maybe not in blood, but we’re close in every other way,” Fortune said.
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