The genesis of “the Almighty Dollar” – from Genesis to Washington Irving...

The word almighty, used in connection with God, appears 57 times in the King James Version of the Bible.

Starting in the Book of Genesis, God is variously referred to as “the Almighty God,” “God Almighty” and, most often, simply as “the Almighty.”

The English idiom “the almighty dollar,” which is commonly used to mock the worship of wealth and money, does not come from the Bible.

It was coined in 1836 by the American author Washington Irving, whose best known works include the short stories “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle.”

There is an earlier, similar term. In 1616, the English playwright and poet Ben Jonson used the term “almighty gold” in his poem “Epistle to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland.”

But the more familiar “almighty dollar” first appeared in a travel story Irving wrote about a steamboat trip he took through the Louisiana bayous.

The story, titled “The Creole Village,” was originally published in the November 12, 1836 issue of Knickerbocker Magazine.

Irving was impressed by the laid back lifestyle of the Creole people who lived in Louisiana’s bayou country and by how unconcerned they seemed (at least to him) about making or having money.

He wrote in his travel piece:

“The inhabitants, moreover, have none of that eagerness for gain and rage for improvement which keep our people continually on the move...In a word, the almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout our land, seems to have no genuine devotees in these peculiar villages; and unless some of its missionaries penetrate there, and erect banking houses and other pious shrines, there is no knowing how long the inhabitants may remain in their present state of contented poverty.”

Near the end of the piece, Irving opined:

“As we swept away from the shore, I cast back a wistful eye upon the moss-grown roofs and ancient elms of the village, and prayed that the inhabitants might long retain their happy ignorance, their absence of all enterprise and improvement, their respect for the fiddle, and their contempt for the almighty dollar.”

I suspect this romantic vision overestimated how content the locals were to be poor.

Of course, in 1855, when “The Creole Village” was included in a collection of his stories called Wolfert’s Roost, Irving made it clear that he had meant no offense — to the almighty dollar, that is.

In a satirical footnote in that book (later included in larger Irving anthologies like The Crayon Miscellany), Irving wrote:

“This phrase [the almighty dollar], used for the first time in this sketch, has since passed into current circulation, and by some has been questioned as savoring of irreverence. The author, therefore, owes it to his orthodoxy to declare that no irreverence was intended even to the dollar itself; which he is aware is daily becoming more and more an object of worship.”

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“Don’t Bogart that joint, my friend…”

[Reposted by popular demand…]

On June 24, 1968, ABC Records released the self-titled first album by The Fraternity of Man, a California-based rock band whose members included former Mothers of Invention guitarist Elliot Ingber and a young, 17-year-old singer and songwriter named Larry Wagner.

The album wasn’t a big hit. But it was popular with some young people who were in the midst of their pot-smoking Hippie phase (like me).

It included a humorous, country-flavored song that made us laugh. That song included a line that became a pop culture quotation and an idiomatic expression.

The song’s lyrics were written by Wagner, who was nicknamed “Stash” by the band. The music was written by Ingber.

They titled the song “Don’t Bogart Me.”

Today, it’s more commonly (though mistakenly) referred to as “Don’t Bogart That Joint.”

That phrase, from the song’s chorus, became a slang term meaning “don’t keep holding onto that marijuana joint — pass it on and let other people have some.” 

Initially, awareness of the song and the Bogart term was primarily limited to Hippies (a name coined by San Francisco journalist Michael Fallon in 1965).

That changed in 1969, thanks to actor Dennis Hopper, one of the pot-smoking hipsters who knew the song.

Early that year, Hopper was engrossed in editing the new film he’d created with his friend and co-star Peter Fonda — the seminal counterculture classic Easy Rider.

As he edited the movie, Hopper chose some of songs he’d recently been listening to for the soundtrack.

One of them was the Fraternity of Man’s “Don’t Bogart Me.”

Easy Rider premiered in the US on July 14, 1969 at the Beekman Theater in New York, two months after it was unveiled at the Cannes Film Festival.

It soon began appearing in theaters throughout the country.

And, soon, millions of people who’d never heard the 1968 Fraternity of Man album were familiar with the saying “Don’t Bogart that joint,” thus firmly embedding in our language.

In fact, the use of “Bogart” as a verb eventually became an idiom used in association with many things other than marijuana joints.

Today, you get thousands of, er, hits if you Google “don’t Bogart” -joint (using the minus sign to find uses that do not include the word “joint”).

There are various theories about why the last name of actor Humphrey Bogart came to be used as a verb that was originally tied to smoking something or holding onto something.

The one that makes the most sense to me is that, in many of his classic films, Bogart often has a lit cigarette hanging from his lips but is not actively smoking it. He’s just letting it burn and turn to ashes.

Bogart died in 1957 from  esophageal cancer. If he’d lived until 1969, he may or may not have liked the way his name was used in the song.

But somehow, in my mind, I can imagine Bogie and Dennis Hopper in the afterlife gleefully singing “Don’t Bogart Me” together.

And, thinking about that makes me want to sing along.

If you want to join us, light ‘em if you got ‘em, and click the video link at right.

Here are the lyrics…

Don’t Bogart that joint my friend
Pass it over to me
Don’t Bogart that joint my friend
Pass it over to me

Roll another one
Just like the other one
You’ve been hanging on to it
And I sure would like a hit

Ro-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ll another one
Just like the other one
That one’s just about burnt to the end
So, come on and be a real friend.

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Related listening, viewing and reading…

“How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?”

The phrase “beautiful people” had been used prior to the 1960s.

For example, in Oscar Wilde’s play An Ideal Husband, a social comedy first performed in 1895, one of the characters says at a gathering of high society partygoers: “I like looking at geniuses, and listening to beautiful people.”

And, in 1941, William Saroyan titled one of his plays The Beautiful People.

But it wasn’t until the 1960s that “beautiful people” became an expression that had a generally recognized social meaning. In fact, there were two different Sixties terms about “beautiful people.”

One version was “the beautiful people,” a name applied to glamorous celebrities, wealthy “jet setters” and other fashion trendsetters.

That version is generally credited to Diana Vreeland, the influential editor of Vogue magazine. Vogue started using the term “the beautiful people” in 1962 in articles about celebrities, at Vreeland’s suggestion, and it quickly caught on.

Another version, without the word the, was popularized in the mid-1960s by the young people commonly known as “the Hippies.” In Hippie parlance, “beautiful people” were people who were cool and spiritually “enlightened.” (As in: “They’re really beautiful people, man.”)

Being one of those “beautiful people” didn’t require wealth or fame. You could become one by taking a psychedelic drug like LSD, or by getting your enlightenment from some hip form of religion, such as transcendental meditation.

In 1967, the Beatles made a sly reference to the Hippie version of the term and subtly mocked the Vogue-style “beautiful people” in their song “Baby You’re a Rich Man.” It starts with the famous line:

      “How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?”

As noted by many websites and books about the Beatles, “Baby You’re a Rich Man” was actually made from two songs originally written separately by John Lennon and his fellow Beatle Paul McCartney.

The opening verses were from a song Lennon wrote and initially called “One of the Beautiful People.” Around the same time, McCartney wrote a song that repeated the words “Baby you’re a rich man” in the chorus.

At some point, Lennon and McCartney decided to combine their two songs into one, something they had done before in other famous Beatle songs, such as “A Day in the Life.”

Lennon and McCartney recorded their combo composition with the other two Beatles, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, on May 11, 1967. John sang lead and played the clavioline, an early electronic instrument that gave the song a distinctive aural character.

The finished song was released with the title “Baby You’re A Rich Man” on July 7, 1967, on the B-side of the 45rpm record that featured “All You Need Is Love” on the A-side.

But it wasn’t until August 12, 1967 that “Baby You’re A Rich Man” entered Billboard's Hot 100 chart. Unlike “All You Need Is Love,” which zoomed to #1 on August 19, 1967, “Baby You’re A Rich Man” was not a huge hit in itself. It peaked at #34.

Both songs were included on the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour album, which was released that November. Magical Mystery Tour hit #1 on Billboard’s Top LPs chart on January 6, 1968 and remained the number one selling album in the US for eight weeks.

In the years since then, John Lennon’s in-joke question “How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?” has become a famous quote cited by many books and websites.

And, most old Beatles fans (like me), and any younger Beatles fans worth their salt, are familiar with the rest of the lyrics to “Baby You’re A Rich Man.”

“How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?”

For a refresher, or just for the pleasure of it, click the link to the video at right and follow along...

“How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?
Now that you know who you are,
What do you want to be?
And have you traveled very far?
Far as the eye can see.

How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?
How often have you been there?
Often enough to know.
What did you see when you were there?
Nothing that doesn’t show.

Baby you’re a rich man,
Baby you’re a rich man,
Baby you’re a rich man, too.
You keep all your money in a big brown bag, inside a zoo.
What a thing to do!
Baby you’re a rich man,
Baby you’re a rich man,
Baby you’re a rich man, too

How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?
Tuned to a natural E,
Happy to be that way.
Now that you’ve found another key,
What are you going to play?

[Chorus repeats]

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 Further reading, listening and viewing…

As American as apple pie, cherry pie – and violence...

Apple trees are not native to America. They originated in Central Asia and were grown in Asia and Europe long before European colonists brought them to North America.

However, as explained in a post by the eminent word and phrase expert Barry Popik on his site, American-grown apples and American-style apple pies eventually became renowned for having a special sweetness and flavor.       

That led to the term “American apple pie,” which was used to distinguish American-style apple pies from pies made in other countries.

By the 1920s, the phrase “as American as apple pie” was floating around. By the 1940s it had become a common idiomatic expression.

There’s no famous quotation or date to cite for the origin of “as American as apple pie.” The exact origin is unknown.

But there is a notorious variation that’s linked to the date July 27.

On July 27, 1967, the black activist H. Rap Brown gave a rancorous speech at a press conference in Washington, D.C. that is widely cited as the origin of his well-known quote:

     “Violence is as American as cherry pie.”

In a way, it was the origin. However, that seven-word aphorism is the shortened, popularized version of what Brown said in his speech.

What he actually said that day was:

     “I say violence is necessary. Violence is a part of America’s culture. It is as American as cherry pie. Americans taught the black people to be violent. We will use that violence to rid ourselves of oppression if necessary. We will be free, by any means necessary.”

Ironically, at the time, Brown was Director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

His fiery remarks at the July 27 press conference were, in part, a reaction to an announcement President Lyndon Johnson made that day.

Johnson announced that he was creating a special government commission formally titled “The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders.” It later came to be popularly known as The Kerner Commission, after its chair, Governor Otto Kerner of Illinois.

Johnson asked the 11-member Commission to determine the causes of the violent race riots that had swept through major American cities during the past few years, most recently in Newark and Detroit, and to recommend ways to stop such riots from happening in the future.

Brown decided to respond to this news by holding a press conference at SNCC’s Washington headquarters.

He scoffed at the idea that the causes of the riots were a mystery. “Rebellions are caused by conditions,” he said.

Then he made his famous comments about violence being necessary and as American as cherry pie and topped that off by adding: “If you give me a gun and tell me to shoot my enemy, I might just shoot Lady Bird.” (Referring to President Johnson’s wife, Claudia, whose popular nickname was “Lady Bird.”)
 
Brown went on to call President Johnson a “white honky cracker” and “a mad wild dog” and said that if America’s cities didn’t “come around” they “should be burned down.”

None of his comments that day gained the lasting notoriety of his cherry pie aphorism.

It’s not clear why he chose cherry pie instead of apple pie. But in his controversial 1969 autobiography Die Nigger Die!, Brown helped popularize his version of the saying by using it in the pithier form that’s often mistakenly attributed to his July 27, 1967 speech.

In the book, Brown wrote (using a lower case “a” for America, to show his disdain):

     “This country was born on violence. Violence is as american as cherry pie. Black people have always been violent, but our violence has always been directed toward each other. If nonviolence is to be practiced, then it should be practiced in our community and end there. Violence is a necessary part of revolutionary struggle.”

As I write this, the President of the United States is a black man who is serving his second term in office.

H. Rap Brown (who changed his name to Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin while in prison for armed robbery in the 1970s) is now serving a life sentence in prison for murder.

He was convicted of killing African-American police officer Ricky Kinchen in 2000, during a shootout in Georgia that occurred when Kinchen tried to serve a warrant on him.

On July 19, 2013, President Barack Obama held a press conference at the White House to express his views on a Florida jury’s recent decision to acquit George Zimmerman of murder for shooting and killing the young black teenager Trayvon Martin.

The President acknowledged that race relations in America are better than they were when he was Trayvon’s age.

But he noted that racism in America clearly has not been eliminated.

More recent events in Ferguson, Missouri and elsewhere have seemed to give further credence to that view.

And, the continuing occurrence of gun-related homicides in the United states, affecting people of all races, seem to validate the view that violence is indeed still as American as cherry — or apple — pie.

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