February 2009

My obsession with “Dardanella” continues, but today, in a local thrift store, my attention was momentarily arrested by a pristine 78-RPM disc of the Mills Brothers’ singing, “Paper Moon.” In retrospect, I suppose it was not all that big a deal — given that “Paper Moon” was the biggest hit the Mills Brothers had in their sixty-year career, there’s gotta be a lot of these discs floating around. But I did find myself enjoying a fleeting rush of serendipity. I’ll explain the connection to “Dardanella” in a moment, but first, hark! Let’s listen to the song…

Yes, that was an odd clip, one more to add to the endless collection of oddities you’ll find on YouTube. But it fits, because “Paper Doll” is an odd song - one of those tunes that sound nice enough when you listen to it casually, but then when you really listen to it, all kinds of oogie implications creep into your head. Think about it: “I’d rather have a paper doll to call my own,” sings the crooner, “than have a fickle-minded real live girl.”

Really?

Back to “Dardanella.” The authorship of “Dardanella” was attributed, after some dispute and at least one lawsuit, to three writers. One of them, Johnny S. Black, died in 1936 after getting knocked in the head, or so the story goes, in a night club altercation over a matter of twenty-five cents. And so it was that one of the authors of the biggest hit of 1920 never lived to see the success of his other greatest song, “Paper Doll” — the biggest hit of 1943.

“Dardanella” leads everywhere, to all things. Trust me on this, the more you look, the more you find in it.

As for the disc in the thrift store, it’s still there. I don’t own a turntable, so I didn’t buy it. Alas.

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(Note: Thursday is the 200th anniversary of the births of both Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. Yes, it’s true: They were born on the same day.)

Fourscore and several million years ago, our forebears brought forth on another continent, a new primate, conceived at random and subject to the proposition that no adaptations are created equal.

Nature is engaged in a universal war, testing whether that species, or any species so conceived and so generated can long endure. The earth is the great battlefield of that war. We have come to understand that poorly-adapted species, in this final testing-place, must here give their lives, that those who are better adapted might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that they should do this.

For in a larger sense, we cannot speculate — we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow this ground. The brave phyla, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note, nor long remember, the gods to which we pray here, but the fossil record will always mark what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who evolved here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these adaptations we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this species, ruled by nature, shall have a new burst of population — and that its descendants, of the genome, by the genome, and for the genome, shall not perish from the earth.

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