The melodious veep.(Flashback)

The only U.S. Vice President to have written a tune covered by Van Morrison and the Four Tops knew something of the fickleness of fame.

Charles G. Dawes, the Chicago banker who served under Calvin Coolidge, had a great-great-grandfather who rode with Paul Revere (the patriot, not the guy who played keyboards for the Raiders). Legend has it that Longfellow memorialized only the silversmith, and not Dawes' ancestor, because "the name Revere rhymed better." A later poet, Helen Moore, would write sympathetically:

 
   'Tis all very well for the children to hear 
   Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere; 
   But why should my name be quite forgot 
   Who rode as boldly and well, God wot? 
   Why should I ask? The reason is clear: 
   My name was Dawes and his Revere. 

Charles Dawes, descendant of the eclipsed rider, first made his mark rather less heroically, as a lieutenant in the Mark Hanna political machine that elected William McKinley President. Dawes' subsequent stint as comptroller of the currency led naturally into banking, but he was musical enough to stand out among the plutocrats. As one journalist wrote, "In the conformist Dawes there is bottled up an individualist. In the banker Dawes there is bottled up an artist."

Charles Dawes composed "Melody in A Major" in a single piano sitting in 1911. "It's just a tune that I got in my head, so I set it down," he said modestly. Dawes played it for a friend, violinist Francis MacMillan, who showed it to a publisher, and before he knew it, Dawes was a composer.

"No one told me it had been published," he recalled. "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."

A phonograph recording of "Melody in A Major" sold briskly, to Dawes' amusement: "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 ...