{"id":61153,"date":"2026-08-23T01:00:40","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T05:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=61153"},"modified":"2026-08-22T10:49:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T14:49:47","slug":"qotd-i-found-a-million-dollar-baby-in-a-five-and-ten-cent-store","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/qotd-i-found-a-million-dollar-baby-in-a-five-and-ten-cent-store\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: “I found a million dollar baby in a five and ten cent store”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It’s one of those numbers that sings so easily you’d have to be a total idiot to louse it up. I’ve always loved it because it’s pure Americana, a song that no other culture could have produced. As I mentioned last week, I’m often asked how I started writing, what got me interested, who were my influences, all the usual questions. And I don’t really have a ready answer. But, if I were to be semi-serious about it, it was songs like this that tickled my curiosity about language \u2013 not just the words and phrases and images, but the way the ideas were expressed so neatly. Compression is the essence of songwriting, and if you had to come up with a couplet that defines the genre, that encompasses a whole world and a whole point of view and an entire musical tradition, “I found a million dollar baby in a five and ten cent store” comes as close as any.<\/p>\n

I once asked a friend in the French music biz how the song went over there. I hummed him the tune and he sang me the French lyrics and, although I can’t recall any of them, I remember they were entirely different from the English words. It’s not just the five-and-ten that’s hard to translate or the million dollar baby. But the concept of finding the latter inside the former is also very American. There are a ton of Mitteleuropean<\/em> operettas in which the prince or duke or count wanders into the streets in disguise and falls in love with a serving wench, but the serving wench usually turns out to be a Countess or Margravine or some such also wandering around in disguise. Even the British are prone to this syndrome (Spring In Park Lane<\/em>, etc). But in an American song the shop girl is a genuine shop girl, and she’s still a million dollar baby. That’s what makes it American.<\/p>\n

In the Sixties, by the way, you could have found a future billion dollar baby in a five and ten cent store: Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, got his start in retail as a franchisee at a Ben Franklin’s, founded in 1920 by the Butler brothers, who’d been in the five-and-dime business since the 1870s. I’m not saying “I Found a Million Dollar Greeter in the Big Box Store at the Strip Mall on the Edge of Town” would be as big a hit, but there is an historical continuity from the Butlers to Wal-Mart.<\/p>\n

Mark Steyn, “I Found a Million Dollar Baby (in a Five and Ten Cent Store)”, Steyn Online<\/em><\/a>, 2020-10-25.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s one of those numbers that sings so easily you’d have to be a total idiot to louse it up. I’ve always loved it because it’s pure Americana, a song that no other culture could have produced. As I mentioned last week, I’m often asked how I started writing, what got me interested, who were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[831,1117,7,28,41,13],"tags":[262,200,45,381],"class_list":["post-61153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-france","category-history","category-media","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-culture","tag-music","tag-nostalgia","tag-theatre"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-fUl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61153"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104346,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61153\/revisions\/104346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}