Charles Gates Dawes

“MANY A TEAR HAS TO FALL, BUT IT’S ALL IN THE GAME…” Those bittersweet words set to music are probably familiar to those of us who are old enough to remember one of the biggest hits of the 1950s.

But did you know that this classic American tune was written by one of Marietta’s native sons?

The “Dawes Melody” or “Melody in A Major” was composed in 1911 by Charles Gates Dawes, a banker, World War I general, diplomat, musician and composer — and a Republican politician who was the 30th vice president of the United States under Calvin Coolidge. Born in 1865 in his grandparents’ home at the corner of Putnam and Fourth Streets, in what is today the Betsey Mills Club, Dawes holds the distinction of being the only U.S. vice president and the only Nobel Prize winner ever to write a No. 1 hit.

Another Mariettan who put our town on the map was a friend of Dawes –Francis MacMillen, who gained world fame as a violin virtuoso and composer. He was born at 213 Fourth St. (today the Marietta College Physical Plant) and began studying the violin and piano at the age of 5.

At 16, he was studying abroad where he went on to achieve many musical awards and by the age of 21 had gained worldwide recognition. He was the first great violinist to make a phonograph record with full orchestral accompaniment, playing his own creation, “Causine,” for the English Victor Talking Machine Company. During visits back to his hometown, he held concerts to entertain fellow Mariettans, once even playing to a large audience from the courthouse steps. Dawes — a self-taught pianist, flutist and composer — wrote his famous melody at a single sitting at his lakeshore home in Evanston, Illinois, today the Evanston History Center. One day, Dawes was playing his haunting melody on the piano for his Marietta friend, Francis MacMillen, who liked it enough to show the sheet music to a publisher — and with that, Dawes’ melody was introduced to the world.

The composition, “Melody in A Major,” became a well-known piano and violin piece in 1912. It was arranged for a small orchestra and was played at many official functions that Dawes attended. In the 1940s, it had been picked up by musicians such as Tommy Dorsey, but it wasn’t until the summer of 1951 that New York songwriter Carl Sigman penned the sentimental lyrics that give meaning to the melody.

Tommy Edwards recorded the song in 1958 as a pop, doo-wop arrangement, and it held the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for six weeks, making Edwards the first African-American to chart a No. 1 hit.

Despite its wide range of melody, making it somewhat difficult to sing, it came to be one of the most recorded songs of all time. Louis Armstrong produced a jazz arrangement, and other artists over the years made it theirs, including Bing Crosby, Van Morrison, Merle Haggard, Barry Manilow and Elton John.

As fate would have it, on the day in 1951 that Sigman finished writing the words to that unforgettable tune, Dawes died of a heart attack, never getting to hear the timeless, nostalgic lyrics about love and life that complement his melody with just the right words to produce the classic hit song, “It’s All in the Game.”