Every Billboard Hot 100 Single 1970: #207: ” It’s All In The Game”- The Four Tops. April 25, 1970.

• Single: “It’s All In The Game”- The Four Tops
• Record Company-Motown
• Genre: Soul
• Written by Charles Dawes and Carl Sigman
• Time: 2:49
• B-side:” Love {Is The Answer}
• Album-Still Waters Run Deep
• Grade: A
• Peaked at #24 13 weeks in the Billboard Hot 100.

The most successful version of “It’s All In The Game” on the charts was the #1 hit version by Tommy Edwards in 1958- which makes it the only #1 ever to have been co-written by a U.S. Vice-President and Nobel Prize laureate. Charles Dawes the future Vice President for Calvin Coolidge wrote the music to what became “It’s All In The Game” in 1911 as “Melody and A Minor.” The Dawes family has played a role in American history- his father Rufus was a Civil War General- and a hero at the Battle of Gettysburg, his great-great grandfather William Dawes alerted the minutemen of the approaching British army prior to the Battle of Lexington and Concord. Another great-great grandfather Rev. Manassah Cutler was instrumental in the Northwest ordinance in 1787.

The Four Tops and R&B vocal group out of Detroit led by singer Levi Stubbs had 45 Hot 100 singles with 24 making the Top 40. Their 2 #1’s “I Can’t Help Myself” in 1965 and later in 1966- “Reach Out I’ll Be There.” They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990. My favorite version of “It’s All In The Game”- by Van Morrison on his Into The Music album in 1979.