The Selfish Meme
Let me tell you my story. It’s a fascinating one, one set during the biggest events in human history. Big, big, big! Humongous, gargantuan, mammoth, mythic, substantial!
I was born in 1927 when I sprang from the head of Jaromír Vejvoda who played Zeus to my Athena. Vejvoda, a Czech musician and composer, desperately needed money, that great motivator of men. The 19th century American historian Louis Hacker wrote, “Economic motivation is paramount in man.” That never really caught on as a meme, not like I did. If you approach any stranger and tell them to complete the phrase “Economic motivation is blank,” 99.9999% of the human population will be unable to do it. But if you ask them to sing the verse that follows “Roll out the barrel…” most people in the western hemisphere will gleefully cry out “We’ll have a barrel of fun!” That’s because I am catchy, memorable, immortal!
Will Glahé recorded me in 1939 and I was number one on the Hit Parade. This version of me was distributed by Shapiro Bernstein and it sold many copies in German under my alternative name Rosamunde. I replicated into English through the humans Lew Brown and Wladimir Timm who translated my lyrics. In my English incarnation, I was recorded and played by Bobby Vinton, Billie Holiday, Joe Patek, the Andrews Sisters, Benny Goodman, and the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Joe Patek alone sold over one million copies of me.
