Every Dog Has Its Day

For a rather long while, Jeff Mills' vinyl releases (mostly on Purpose Maker) have been almost solely DJ tools: very repetitive and minimal, with very little in the way of anything besides rhythm and assorted squeeks. He's released a few CD's worth of melodic material, but CD's aren't good for DJ's who like to spin groovy music.

However that all changed with the first volume of Every Dog Has Its Day. These three albums are in the classic Detroit style. Not much in the way of beat, and lots of happy sounds and harsh strings. These are among the rare Mills releases to have anything more than a generic sleeve. Volume I has a plain gold sleeve, and Volume II has a plain silver sleeve; neither have any other identifying marks, except for the labels, with artwork by Mills' brother. Both are available as two 12" records with a total of 9 tracks on Axis Records.

The most common interpretation of this expression is that any given person's moment of glory is inevitable.

This proverb was used in Shakespeare's "Hamlet" (Act 5, Scene 1)

HAMLET:
Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew and dog will have his day.

Everyone likes to note this, but that's not where it originates. It was used in pre-Shakespearean days.

In "Wise Words and Wives' Tales: The Origins, Meanings and Time-Honored Wisdom of Proverbs and Folk Sayings Olde and New" by Stuart Flexner and Doris Flexner (Avon Books, New York, 1993), the history of this proverb is traced to the medieval Dutch scholar Erasmus.

Erasmus said that in 405 B.C. Euripides, a Greek playwright, was mauled and killed by a pack of dogs loosed upon him by a rival. So the saying is usually taken as "even the most lowly person will at some time get revenge on his oppressor, no matter how powerful the man may be."

Plutarch, a Greek biographer, recorded the proverb for the first time in 'Moralia' (A.D. 95): 'Even a dog gets his revenge'.

Richard Taverner includes the phrase in 'Proverbes' or Adages' (1539) as the first English version: 'A dogge hath a day'.

In John Ray's 'A collection of English Proverbs' (1670) it was further modified almost to what it is now: 'Every dog hath his day'.

Personally, without knowing how others define it and without hearing it in context, I always thought that this proverb means "every dog has a finite life span, and will eventually be dead." Everything above contradicts that, so I guess there is no shread of truth in what I thought.