Poker & Pop Culture: Top 10 Most Popular Poker Songs

Poker’s central place in the culture is well supported by its frequent appearance in typically “non-poker” contexts like films, stories, novels, plays, television and radio shows, paintings, and elsewhere. Indeed, one of the more notable ways poker finds its way into the mainstream is via popular music, with many examples of poker-themed chart-toppers over the decades.

Below is a “top 10” list of the most popular poker songs ever, all of which achieved significant notice not just within the subculture of card players, but generally speaking. Indeed, in at least a couple of cases these songs achieved a level of popularity that didn’t just transcend the game, but became cultural phenomena in their own right.

Though necessarily arbitrary in some respects, the list is more or less restricted to songs that achieved significant, contemporary commercial success. In other words, there are several memorable and much-loved poker songs that don’t appear below — songs like Ray Charles’s “Losing Hand” (1957), Bob Dylan’s “Rambling, Gambling Willie” (1962), the Grateful Dead’s “Deal” (1971), AC/DC’s “(She’s Got) the Jack” (1975), or O.A.R.’s “That Was a Crazy Game of Poker” (1997), to name a few.

You might think of others as well that could be considered worthy of cracking this list of popular poker songs — share them in a comment below. Meanwhile, take a look at this attempt to create such a list:

1. Bert Williams, “The Darktown Poker Club” (1914)

Starting off this chronologically-arranged collection poker-themed songs is one we’ve already discussed here in the “Poker & Pop Culture” series, “The Darktown Poker Club” by the Vaudeville performer Bert Williams from just over a hundred years ago.

The first black American to star on Broadway, Williams co-wrote the song for the Ziegfield Follies, the inspiration for which in part came from Henry Guy Carleton’s stories about the fictional Thompson Street Poker Club from the 1880s.

The song’s title character sings of his intentions not to let others at the club cheat him with their bottom dealing and hidden cards, noting that from this point forward he’s “not gonna play this game no more according to Mr. Hoyle — hereafter, it’s gonna be according to me.”

The comedian Phil Harris would enjoy a hit with a cover version in the 1940s, as would the actor and country star Jerry Reed with a version titled “The Uptown Poker Club” in 1973.

2. Fanny Watson and Al Jolson, “Who Played Poker with Pocahantas (When John Smith Went Away)?” (1919)

A couple more stars of the stage were involved in the next big poker hit on our list, one that took liberties with the story of the explorer Captain John Smith and his encounter with the Native American Pocahontas at the Jamestown colony.

While there’s a lot of debate by historians over the nature of the pair’s relationship, the song “Who Played Poker with Pocahantas (When John Smith When Away)?” — recorded separately by Fanny Watson and Al Jolson — is mostly a fiction, probably inspired by the consonance between the name Pocahontas and the card game.

Written for the musical Monte Cristo Jr., the song (like other reimaginings of the story) not only assumes an affair between the title characters, but has Smith having taught Pocahontas poker, then after leaving and returning being surprised to find her having played and won from others.

“Every time that John came back,” goes the song, “he found her with a larger stack” — suggesting a bit of innuendo here as though Pocahantas might be cheating with others (and not at cards).

Not that we care too much about historical accuracy here, but it would be another couple hundred years after John Smith and Pocahantas lived before poker would come to be.

3. T. Texas Tyler, “The Deck of Cards” (1948)

The country singer and songwriter T. Texas Tyler had a string of hits during the 1940s and 1950s, with his spoken-word track “The Deck of Cards” being his most famous.

The song — which reached No. 2 on the country charts in 1948 — tells the story of a soldier getting caught playing cards in church and facing punishment from a superior officer. The soldier then pleads his case, telling how in fact he wasn’t about to deal a hand of poker, but was rather reaffirming his faith with the cards.

“The ace, it reminds me that there is but one God,” he begins, then goes on to connect the trey with the holy trinity, the four with the four apostles, the six with the six days of creation, and drawing other parallels.

Some of the connections become a bit uncanny, in fact. “When I count the number of spots in a deck of cards, I find 365, the number of days in a year,” he says, also connecting the 52 cards with 52 weeks, 12 picture cards with the 12 months, and so …

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