A Bit of Trivia

Yesterday's trivial pursuit question: How is the tune "It's All In the Game" relevant to Al Gore and the Nobel Prize?

No one answered it, so here it is: Charles G. Dawes, Vice President of the United States under Calvin Coolidge and also a former Nobel Peace Prize winner, was also big in show business. Sort of.

While Gore got an Oscar for his movie, Dawes had a #1 tune that is still being recorded today.

Dawes was a banker, a solider, a musician, a bureaucrat, a diplomat, a politician, and a statesman. In addition to being a Vice President of the United States, he was also the first Director of the U.S. Budget Office, a Comptroller of the Currency, and an Ambassador to Great Britain. He got the Nobel Prize for being one of the architects of the Dawes Plan for World War I reparations. Like Al Gore he had four children, but unlike Al Gore, he adopted two of them,

Dawes wrote the music for All in the Game in 1912 and called it "Melody in A Major." In 1951, Carl Sigman added lyrics and retitled the already-popular tune, and it went to #1 in the U.S. and in the U.K. in 1958 thanks to Tommy Edwards' masterful rendition.

Since then, the song has been recorded by Johnny Mathis (a great version), Barry Manilow, Danny Kaye, Dinah Shore, Louis Armstrong (my favorite version), Engelbert Humperdinck, Keith Jarrett, The Four Tops (video below), Van Morrison (the most unrecognizable version), Merle Haggard, Art Garfunkle, and even Elton John.

To hear a little more about the tune from the sages at NPR (as well as various snippets from a wide variety of artists), click here.



The Four Tops - It's All In The Game
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