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What's your favorite gambling song?
Our favorite gambling song? It usually depends on the day and which one we heard last. But thinking it over, several come to mind from left field.
"The Gambler," written by Don Schlitz and turned into a smash hit by Kenny Rogers, is definitely on the list. The song reached number one on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart, number three in adult contemporary, and 16 on Billboard's mainstream Hot 100 chart and Rogers' The Gambler album earned a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year in 1979, while the single was nominated for Record of the Year. It's about as iconic a gambling song as exists.
Unfortunately, we had a, let's just say, regrettable personal experience with Kenny Rogers in the mid-1990s, so we can't hear or write about "The Gambler" without it being colored by that situation.
We also like "Do It Again" by Steely Dan, "Easy Money" by Billy Joel, "Go Down Gambling" by Blood, Sweat and Tears, and "Lonesome Loser" by the Little River Band.
The earliest and most impactful gambling song in our life was "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man" by Bob Seger, his first big radio hit in 1968. We were 16 (and Seger was 23) and the ramblin' part hit us over the head with a sledge hammer so hard that we've never gotten over it, lo these 57 years.
But if you held our feet to the fire and made us pick just one favorite gambling song, it would have to be "When You're Hot, You're Hot," the Jerry Reed ditty that crossed over from country to the Top 40; it was the title track of Reed's 1971 album and won a Grammy Award for Best Male Country Vocal Performance. How can you resist the opening verse:
"Well now me and Homer Jones and Big John Talley
Had a big crap game goin' back in the alley."
It's a great illegal-gambling story from back in the day, complete with cop, judge, bribe, jail sentence, and funny last line: "Who gonna collect my welfare, pay for my Cadillac?" Not to mention the driving beat by the drums and rhythm guitar, the breakneck backup singers, Reed's rapping more than singing, and the snappy chorus, "When you're hot you're hot, when you're not you're not."
That's us. What's your favorite gambling song?