Favorite BIG #1 HITS Through the Years: 1974 Country

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As I look at a number one song from each of the first 25 years of my life in pop music, I'm also picking a #1 country song. I grew up on country music, and it's impossible for me to ignore it. A number of these songs also found their way into the pop world, what they call "crossover" songs. The song I picked for today's country chart-topper did just that. 1974 (Country): There Won't Be Anymore - Charlie Rich Here's how it goes in life: an artist gets signed to a record deal, does nothing, and gets dropped from the label. Later on, the artist goes to another label and has a mega-super-dooper-collasal-big hit...then that label that dropped the artist way back when starts reissuing all those "flops" as "new music." That's pretty much what happened here. Charlie Rich recorded this, according to discography information, in the early 1960s while he was working for a subsidiary label of RCA. The "main man" at RCA, Chet Atkins, produced the session. Nothing came of it back then. In fact, the session was so inconsequential that no session information survives to explain who played on the track. (And that is rare for an RCA label, take it from someone who's gone through RCA session sheets at the Hall of Fame!) Then came 1973. Rich was signed to Epic Records and had that big, big, BIG hit referenced earlier: "Behind Closed Doors." That was a #1 country hit, a top 20 pop hit, a Grammy winner, and a CMA winner. Rich followed that up with "The Most Beautiful Girl," another chart-topper (this time, climbing to #1 on the pop charts as well). And here come the old, old songs flying out of RCA's vault. This happens a lot, too: in 1978, after the success of Excitable Boy, the budget label Pickwick re-issued Zevon's less-than-stellar 1969 album Wanted Dead or Alive. There was a story in Rolling Stone that said Zevon was going all over the place trying to buy up the copies so no one would hear it. In this case, however, RCA released a gem of a song instead of trying to find something cringe-worthy to put out. They picked this song out of the vaults and put it out, probably to Epic's chagrin, but there was enough to go around. (Rich's 1974 Epic single, "A Very Special Love Song," was the #1 single of 1974 in country music.) The bitterness of a man who's had enough heartbreak comes through as he tells his old love that it is over, and to just forget him should she suffer the heartbreak he felt ("don't think of the love we had till you turned bad and broke my loving heart in two, and when your heart is breaking and you need some loving from me, there won't be anymore"). Charlie Rich was a gifted singer, songwriter, and piano player whose success was probably overshadowed by those "other guys" at Sun Records in the 50s (Cash, Presley, Jerry Lee, and Roy Orbison). All of that brilliance shines brightly here in one of his best songs from RCA, or any, era of his career. There Won't Be Anymore Written by Charlie Rich Recorded by Charlie Rich From There Won't Be Anymore, 1973 #1 for two weeks Don't wait for the postman: