The Daily Feather — Devouring Golf Balls

The songwriting prowess of music legends Lou Adler and Herb Alpert wasn’t enough to get “Wonderful World” to fruition. Singer-songwriter Sam Cooke added the finishing lyrical touches and then recorded the single during an impromptu session in March 1959, his last recording at Keen Records. Thirteen months later, in April 1960, the song was released. Peaking at No. 12 on Billboard’s Hot 100, it performed better than many of Cooke’s singles after he switched labels to RCA Victor in 1960. Throughout the years, the tune has been covered by Otis Redding, Michael Bolton, and Art Garfunkel. On the big screen, it was featured in the 1983 Richard Gere drama Breathless and the 2005 Will Smith comedy Hitch. Hands down, the most memorable appearance arrived during the famous food fight lunchroom scene of the 1978 classic Animal House. It plays as background as Bluto (John Belushi) begins to feed off leftovers while students drop off their trays, especially the golf ball he infamously devours from a bowl of soup.

Cooke swooned that he “don’t know much about history.” What we do know about history is that it often rhymes. As we’ve highlighted of late, a core argument posed by the last inhabitants of the ‘soft landing’ camp theme is the strength of real Gross Domestic Product (GDP). We mere mortals on Planet Earth reference real Gross Domestic Income (GDI).