About The Song
Don’t Wait on Me entered the country charts after its June 13, 1981 release as the first single from The Statler Brothers’ album Years Ago. Don Reid and Harold Reid wrote the song. Jerry Kennedy produced the recording for Mercury Nashville. The track runs 3:16 and carried “Chet Atkins’ Hand” on the B-side.
The single peaked at number 5 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. It reached number 36 on the Canadian RPM Country Tracks list. A live version recorded years later for the 1989 album Live and Sold Out charted at number 67.
Don Reid and Lew DeWitt trade lead vocals on the verses in a call-and-response style that became a signature touch on the record. The song is a firm declaration that a broken relationship will not be repaired. One former partner lists a series of impossible events that would have to happen before any return could be considered. The sun would have to rise in the west and set in the east. Madalyn Murray O’Hair would have to be ordained a priest. A San Diego sailor would have to come home without a tattoo. The wind would stop blowing in Chicago. Los Angeles would turn cold and clear. A Fourth of July parade would be canceled because of snow. Christmas would arrive before New Year’s. Only then, the singer says, would he come home. Until those things occur, the advice is simple and repeated: don’t wait on me.
One of the cultural references later required an update. The original lyric mentioned the day the lights went on at Wrigley Field. At the time of the 1981 recording, Wrigley was the last major-league ballpark without lights for night games. Those lights were installed in 1988. When the group performed the song on their 1989 live album, they changed the line to refer to putting a dome on the ballpark instead.
The song arrived during a steady commercial stretch for the group. Years Ago also produced the title track and the later top-three single “You’ll Be Back (Every Night in My Dreams).” “Don’t Wait on Me” itself ranks among the group’s twenty biggest Billboard country hits.
Its humor rests on the accumulation of absurd conditions. Each new impossibility piles on the last until the message becomes unmistakable. Reconciliation is not coming. The former partner should stop expecting it. The Statler Brothers delivered that message with the same tight harmonies and storytelling clarity that marked their best-known work, turning a list of unlikely events into a clear and lasting refusal.
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Lyric
When the sun wakes up in the west
And lays it’s head down in the east
When they ordain Madlyn O’Hare
And she becomes a priest
When a San Diego sailor
Comes home with no tattoo
When they put a dome on Wrigley Field
I’ll be comin’ home to you
But don’t wait on me, little darlin’
Lord, can’t you see, little darlin’?
I only go so far
There ain’t no guarantee
Don’t wait on me and when you
That’s somethin’ I just can’t do
I never have and don’t intend to
Don’t wait on me
When the wind don’t blow in Chicago
And L.A. is cold and clear
When they unfurl Old Glory
And no one stands to cheer
When my brother-in-law phones me
And the charges ain’t reversed
When the cabbie don’t want a bigger tip
I’ll be slidin’ home from first
And don’t wait on me, little darlin’
Lord, can’t you see, little darlin’?
I only go so far
There ain’t no guarantee
Don’t wait on me and when you
That’s somethin’ I just can’t do
I never have and don’t intend to
Don’t wait on me
When you load up on a long shot
And you win by half a nose
When the Fourth of July parade
Is called because it snows
When the waiting room is empty
And the Doc says, ‘Come on in’
When Christmas comes before New Years
I’ll be comin’ home again
But don’t wait on me, little darlin’
Lord, can’t you see, small darlin’?
I only go so far
There ain’t no guarantee
Don’t wait on me, when you
That’s somethin’ I just can’t do
I never have and don’t intend to
Don’t wait on me
Don’t wait on me
Don’t wait on me
Don’t wait on me
Don’t wait on me