TOMMY EDWARDS – 'All In The Game'

Well, well, well, you live and learn. According to Wikipedia, the very familar tune to this (which the Four Tops had a go at, amongst many others) was written by one Charles Dawes, vice-president of the United States from 1925-1929 and subsequently US ambassador in London.

Which probably puts him up with Bertolt Brecht amongst the creators of number ones.

Over the years some truly great versions of this song have been released: four tops, van morrison(yes) and cliff(no) but this is the best and is it the first British number one by an Afro American ; effortless pacing and a faultless performance

Critic watch: This song appears on the following “Best-of” lists:
1001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die, and 10,001 You Must Download (2010)
Bruce Pollock (USA) – The 7,500 Most Important Songs of 1944-2000 (2005)
Greil Marcus (USA) – STRANDED: “Treasure Island” Singles (1979)
Mojo (UK) – The 100 Greatest Songs of All Time (2000) 49
Giannis Petridis (Greece) – 2004 of the Best Songs of the Century (2003)

Bloody hell L, I wonder if it was the same bloke – that sounds like the kind of thing he’d have found funny.

I’m struggling to find who recorded this first, circa 1912, but Dawes’ face was on the sheet music, to his discomfort: “No one told me it had been published. I was walking down State Street and came to a music shop. I saw a poster-size picture of myself, my name plastered all over the window in large letters and the window space entirely filled with the sheet music. My business is that of a banker and few bankers have won renown as composers of music. 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.”