My 100 Favorite Charted Country Songs: Too Late to Worry, Too Blue to Cry

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With a title like that, this is another one of those that I don’t really need to introduce as a country song. Today we go WAY BACK to the first year of the hillbilly, western, folk, and race charts (that’s what the country chart was originally called), and the man who wrote the very first #1 song. Too Late to Worry, Too Blue to Cry - Al Dexter Here is another glaring omission from the Country Music Hall of Fame. While you have probably never heard of Albert Poindexter, better known as Al Dexter (Glen Campbell and Ronnie Milsap did covers of this song, which may be as close as I can get), he was, as I mentioned, the man who made country music so stinking popular that Billboard made a chart just for it in January, 1944. Now there is a punch line to this: the very first song that was listed as the #1 country music song in America on that January chart was…by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters. Their version of Dexter’s song “Pistol Packin’ Mama” was listed as the #1 song on the first chart. The next #1 song was Dexter’s own version. Just to show you his popularity, six of the twelve #1 songs in 1944 were Al Dexter songs (including the Crosby/Andrews cover). Also to show you the weirdness of the chart in 1944, other #1 songs that year were by the likes of Tex Ritter, Ernest Tubb, the King Cole Trio (as in Nat “King” Cole), and Louis Jordan. And you thought it was weird when BTO and John Denver were #1 the same month in 1974???? This song was the last of Dexter’s own recordings to hit #1 in 1944. It topped the chart in April and stayed there until mid-June. Yeah, this guy is a glaring omission from the Hall of Fame…even if you’ve never heard of him. Too Late to Worry, Too Blue to Cry Written by Albert Poindexter Recorded by Al Dexter Released as a single, 1944 Peak chart position: #1 Today’s rock song: “The Things We Do for Love” I’ll always love you as days go by: