Trivia time: name the only No. 1 Pop single to have been written by a United States Vice-President.

If you answered “It’s All in the Game,” recorded in 1958 by Tommy Edwards, you win our Second Disc No-Prize!  In 1951, Carl Sigman (“Ebb Tide,” “What Now My Love”) set lyrics to the 1912 (!) melody by Charles Dawes, Vice President under Calvin Coolidge and a Nobel Peace Prize recipient.  Although the song was recorded by Nat “King” Cole, Louis Armstrong and Dinah Shore, it had its most enduring rendition in the 1958 MGM Records recording by Tommy Edwards, the silk-voiced R&B crooner.  But that wasn’t the first time Edwards had recorded the song; he took it to No. 18 in 1951 for MGM, but his updated arrangement later in the decade finally proved the song’s commercial mettle.  Cherry Red’s RPM label remembers the late Edwards with the new 2-CD set It’s All in the Game: The MGM Recordings 1958-1960.  Containing four complete albums plus bonus singles for a total of 57 tracks, it’s a comprehensive overview of an important period in the singer’s career with not just the title track but other hits such as “Please Mr. Sun” (No. 11), “Love Is All We Need” (No. 15), “I Really Don’t Want to Know” (No. 18),” and “My Melancholy Baby” (No. 26).

Although the 1958 recording of “It’s All in the Game” scored on both the pop and R&B charts, Tommy Edwards’ career had its roots in the pre-rock and roll days.  As a songwriter, Edwards placed songs with diverse artists in the pop, country and R&B genres including The Deep River Boys, Red Foley, Louis Jordan and Tony Bennett.   As a solo artist, he achieved success with 1951’s No. 24 hit “The Morning Side of the Mountain,” written by Larry Stock and Dick Manning and memorably recorded two decades later by Donny and Marie Osmond.  His first stab at “It’s All in the Game” hit a respectable No. 18, and all told, MGM released 30 singles by the artist between 1950 and 1957, though Edwards ceased recording in 1955.  The label’s long-term investment in Edwards paid off in 1958 when executive Morty Craft suggested that Edwards team with arranger LeRoy Holmes to re-record “It’s All in the Game” in a new, beat-heavy style.  The new RPM anthology starts with that auspicious recording.

After the jump: more on Tommy, plus a full track listing and order link!

Disc One includes the entirety of Edwards’ 1958 LP It’s All in the Game and 1959 For Young Lovers, both in stereo.  These albums featured more new-fangled remakes of Edwards’ earlier hits (including “Morning Side of the Mountain”) and similarly-styled recordings of standards.   Edwards also recorded his own material as well as offerings from other pop contemporaries like Lee Pockriss and Peter Udell (“It’s Only the Good Times”).  Mack David and Robert Allen’s  single side “I’ve Been There” is added as a bonus track along with both sides of two more singles, “(New in) The Ways of Love” b/w “Honestly and Truly,” and “Don’t Fence Me In” b/w “I’m Building Castles Again.”  The A-side “(New in) the Ways of Love” was a collaboration between Brill Building stalwart Lee Pockriss with Mack’s younger brother, Hal David.

Disc Two’s albums follow the same pattern.  1960’s You Started Me Dreaming offers Edwards applying his romantic tones to standards from Irving Berlin (“Always”), Mitchell Parish and Frank Perkins (“Stars Fell on Alabama”) and Sammy Cahn and Saul Chaplin (“Until the Real Thing Comes Along”).  Step Out Singing, from later the same year, includes Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler’s “Stormy Weather,” Arlen and E.Y. “Yip” Harburg’s “Over the Rainbow” and Les Brown, Ben Horner and Arthur Green’s “Sentimental Journey.”  Six sides (the As and Bs of three singles) have been appended including Edwards’ version of Gene Pitney’s “Blue Heartaches,” another Lee Pockriss/Hal David tune, “Unloved,” and the Sammy Cahn/Jimmy Van Heusen film tune “Suzie Wong.”

Edwards’ hits dried up by the time of 1960’s “It’s Not the End of Everything,” one of the final singles on the second disc here.  He continued recording themed “concept albums” for MGM, but departed the label in 1963.  Following a brief stint with Pitney’s home, Musicor Records, Edwards all but disappeared, with some blaming alcoholism for his decline.  He died in 1969 of a brain aneurysm, his reputation largely surviving on the strength of oldies radio staple "It's All in the Game."  RPM’s new release, with liner notes by John Reed, is a fine and important document of a romantic vocalist par excellence.  A number of the songs on It’s All in the Game are making their first-ever appearance on CD, and per the notes, they have been taken “from the original tapes” housed in the U.S. MGM vaults.

It’s All in the Game: The M-G-M Recordings 1958-1960 is available in stores now from RPM Records and can be ordered below from Amazon U.K.!  A U.S. order link appears to be MIA at the time of this writing.

Tommy Edwards, It’s All in the Game: The M-G-M Recordings 1958-1960 (RPM SHOUT D79, 2012)

CD 1

1. It’s All in the Game
2. The Morning Side of the Mountain
3. I’ll Always Be with You
4. You Win Again
5. Mr. Music Man
6. Please Love Me Forever
7. That’s All
8. My Sugar, My Sweet
9. Love is a Sacred Thing
10. (Now and Then There’s) A Fool Such as I
11. Love is All We Need
12. Please Mr. Sun
13. My Melancholy Baby
14. It’s Only the Good Times
15. A Teardrop on a Rose
16. Paradise
17. I Looked at Heaven
18. She Sends Her Regards
19. It All Belongs to You
20. Music, Maestro, Please
21. Take These Chains from My Heart
22. Once There Lived a Fool
23. Up in a Cloud
24. Welcome Me
25. I’ve Been There
26. (New In) The Ways of Love
27. Honestly and Truly
28. Don’t Fence Me In
29. I’m Building Castles Again

CD 2

1. Indian Summer
2. Always
3. Stars Fell on Alabama
4. Lost in the Desert of Love
5. You’re a Heavenly Thing
6. Navajo
7. Until the Real Thing Comes Along
8. You’re a Sweetheart
9. You Started Me Dreaming
10. My Love is a Sparrow
11. All Over Again
12. Stormy Weather
13. That Old Feeling
14. Symphony
15. My Lucky Star
16. Tangerine
17. The Lamp is Low
18. Over the Rainbow
19. Sentimental Journey
20. Isle of Capri
21. Should I
22. The Composer
23. I Really Don’t Want to Know
24. Unloved
25. Blue Heartaches
26. It’s Not the End of Everything
27. As You Desire Me
28. Suzie Wong

CD 1, Tracks 1-12 from It’s All in the Game, MGM LP SE-3732, 1958
CD 1, Tracks 13-24 from For Young Lovers, MGM LP SE-3760, 1959
CD 1, Track 25 from MGM single 12814, 1959
CD 1, Tracks 26-27 from MGM single 12837, 1959
CD 1, Tracks 28-29 from MGM single 12871, 1960
CD 2, Tracks 1-11 from You Started Me Dreaming, MGM LP SE-3805, 1960
CD 2, Tracks 12-22 from Step Out Singing, SE-3822, 1960
CD 2, Tracks 23-24 from MGM single 12890, 1960
CD 2, Tracks 25-26 from MGM single 12916, 1960
CD 2, Tracks 27-28 from MGM single 12959, 1960