When Joe Biden assumes the office of the vice presidency in January, he will be the first vice president from Delaware, the first Catholic elected to the office, and the first with egregious hair plugs. All of these historic firsts pale in comparison...(ha! I bet you thought I was going to make some pithy comment about Obama's historic election, didn't you? Well, as awesome as that is, I'm taking this in a totally different direction.)
...to Charles G. Dawes, vice president under Calvin Coolidge, the only vice president to have written a number-one hit song.
Dawes, an amateur musician, committed his "Melody in A Major" to paper over the course of one afternoon in 1912, though it had been stuck in his head for days prior to that. A musician friend secretly took it to a sheet music publisher, and bands across the country added it to their sets. Dawes, hardly a household name at the time, was initially flattered by his tune's success, but then the tune just wouldn't die. He went on to serve as Warren G. Harding's Director of the Budget, and won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on post-war reparations in Germany, but the stupid song was still ubiquitous. It didn't fade into obscurity until years after Dawes himself had faded out of the public eye.
Shortly after Dawes's death in 1951, lyricist Carl Sigler resurrected the tune and added the lyrics we know it by today. "It's All in the Game" was put to a shuffling rock-ballad beat and became a number-one hit for Tommy Edwards in 1958. It has since been recorded by everybody from Robert Goulet to the Four Tops. Most recently, Barry Manilow included it on a 2006 covers album.
