25 July 2023

US Vice President Charles G Dawes Writes Hit Pop Song

Greg Poppleton's Phantom Dancer swing jazz radio show

It’s All in the Game is a hit pop song and this week’s Phantom Dancer feature. It’s the only pop song wriiten by a US Vice President and Nobel Prize laureate. His name is Charles G Dawes and he ended up hating the song.

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CHARLES G

“It’s All in the Game” became a pop song in the 1950s when a new title and lyrics were added to an instrumental composition, “Melody in A Major“, written by Charles G. Dawes, written in 1911.

Charles G. Dawes was Vice President of the United States under Calvin Coolidge. It is the only No. 1 single in the U.S. to have been co-written by a U.S. Vice President or a Nobel Peace Prize laureate (Dawes was both).

The song has become a pop standard, with cover versions by dozens of artists, including this week’s 1953 live radio Phantom Dancer version.

DAWES

Charles G. Dawes, a Chicago bank president and amateur pianist and flautist, composed the tune in a single sitting at his lakeshore home in Evanston.

He played it for a friend, the violinist Francis MacMillen, who took Dawes’s sheet music to a publisher.

Dawes, known for his federal appointments and a United States Senate candidacy, was surprised to find a portrait of himself in a music shop window with copies of the tune for sale.

Charles G. Dawes quipped, “I know that I will be the target of my punster friends. They will say that if all the notes in my bank are as bad as my musical ones, they are not worth the paper they were written on.”

The tune, often dubbed “Dawes’s Melody”, followed him into politics, and Charles G. Dawes grew to detest hearing it wherever he appeared. It was a favorite of violinist Fritz Kreisler, who used it as his closing number, and in the 1940s it was picked up by musicians such as Tommy Dorsey.

IT’S ALL IN THE GAME

In mid-1951, the year Charles G. Dawes died, (in April), songwriter Carl Sigman had an idea for a song, and Dawes’s “Melody” struck him as suitable for his sentimental lyrics.

It was recorded that year by Dinah Shore, Sammy Kaye and Carmen Cavallaro, but the first release was by Tommy Edwards in August. Edwards’s version reached No. 18 on the Billboard Records Most Played by Disc Jockeys survey dated September 15, 1951.

The range of the melody would have been “difficult to sing”, so required rearrangement.

A jazz arrangement was recorded by Louis Armstrong (vocals) and arranger Gordon Jenkins, with “some of Armstrong’s most honey-tinged singing”. In 1956, Jenkins would produce a version with Nat King Cole along the same lines.

In 1958, Edwards had only one session left on his MGM contract. Stereophonic sound recording was becoming viable and it was decided to cut a stereo version of “It’s All in the Game” with a rock and roll arrangement. The single was released in July and became a hit, reaching number one for six weeks beginning September 29, 1958, making Edwards the first African-American to chart at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. It would also be the last song to hit number one on the R&B Best Seller list. In November, the song hit No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gtizr2G_7Bk

25 July PLAY LIST