An Ace You Can Keep

The American Story

Christopher Flannery

Society & Culture, Documentary, History

4.6 • 941 Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2020

⏱️ 6 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Most of us understand the language of poker, even if we’ve never played. We know what a “poker face” is, what it means to be “all in” or to “have an ace up your sleeve.” Since Kenny Rogers’s 1978 hit song “The Gambler,” millions of Americans have been singing about poker. It is very much a game of the American West. It has the frontier spirit in it, and it is somehow about life and death and everything in between.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the American Story. Mostly true stories about what it is that makes America beautiful.
0:08.0	Heartbreaking, funny, inspiring, and endlessly interesting.
0:15.3	This is Chris Flannery with the Claremont Institute.
0:18.2	I call this one an ace you can Keep.
0:25.0	Kenny Rogers, the famous country singer, passed away earlier this year at the age of 81.
0:29.0	I don't know much about Rogers,
0:31.0	but I've heard Dolly Parton say some good words about him and that's
0:34.6	enough for me. He had a six-decade career as a singer but over the last 40 of
0:40.2	those years most of the world has known him for his song The Gamber that came out in 1978.
0:46.7	It topped the country chart, won a Grammy, and launched Rogers onto remarkable popularity
0:52.0	playing the Gamber in a series of television movies.
0:55.0	When CBS presented Kenny Rogers as the gambler on April 8th 1980,
1:01.0	31% of American Homes with Televisions tuned in, almost 24 million viewers.
1:07.9	It was the highest rated show on American television that week. The gambler song is interesting because it's not just about
1:15.3	playing cards but about life and death, about the drama of winning and losing,
1:20.6	about how to face good luck and bad luck and no luck at all.
1:26.7	About judgment and character and self-control, understanding people and the nature of things.
1:33.0	Every hand's a loser, and every hand's a winner.
1:37.0	You've got to know what to throw away, what to keep.
1:40.0	Know when to hold them, when to fold them, when to walk away, and when to run.
1:47.0	Rogers was invited to perform the song at the 1979 World Series of Poker,
1:52.8	and it's not surprising that it became something like poker's unofficial anthem.
	...

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