Jimmy Fortune, left, Phil Balsley, Don Reid, and Harold Reid, collectively known as The Statler Brothers, harmonize with each other during a performance in Abilene, Texas. The Statler Brothers have announced that their current tour will be their last. After 38 years and over 500 awards in the music business they are retiring at the end of this year.

The Statler Brothers caught the world’s attention in 1965 with their unintentionally psychedelic hit “Flowers on the Wall,” a strange but catchy musical diatribe that captured the attention of America’s youth with the paradoxical refrain “smokin’ cigarettes and watchin’ ‘Captain Kangaroo’ . . .” As revolutionary notions of Flower Power bloomed in the 1960s, the song’s lyrics raised the eyebrows of suspicious parents, who were convinced that anyone singing about “counting flowers on the wall” while watching a kiddie program must be making subliminal drug references.

Anyone familiar with the squeaky clean Statler Brothers knows that nothing could be further from the truth; the song is about staring at wallpaper from sheer boredom. Probably the closest the Statlers ever got to illicit substances was watching Johnny Cash descend into amphetamine hell early in their career when they were his opening act for eight years. The Statler Brothers are so all-American that they still live in their hometown of Staunton, Virginia, (population 22,000), where they purchased their former elementary school and converted it into Statler headquarters.

After 40 years as country music’s first successful singing combo since the Carter Family, The Statler Brothers are currently engaged in a farewell concert tour, with a show at Huntsville’s Von Braun Center scheduled for October 24. Two nights later, the final Statler concert will be in Salem, Virginia.

Mixing gospel-style harmonies, rural comedy, and nostalgic lyrics on small-town life, The Statler Brothers (only two are actually siblings) were originally known as the Kingsmen until another group by the same name scored a mega-hit with “Louie, Louie.” A box of Statler tissues in a hotel room inspired the new moniker in 1964. “We might have been called the Kleenex Brothers,” quips bass singer Harold Reid. The follow-up single to “Flowers on the Wall” was the oddly titled “My Darlin’ Hildegard,” followed by “You Can’t Have Your Kate and Edith, Too.” Among the Statlers’ biggest fans are novelist Kurt Vonnegut, who dubbed them “America’s poets,” and Quentin Tarantino, who introduced “Flowers on the Wall” to a new audience with its inclusion in the film Pulp Fiction. The Huntsville concert begins at 7:30 p.m., and tickets are $41.50. For more information, call 715-6000 or visit www.ticketmaster.com