{"id":283,"date":"2016-02-22T07:00:23","date_gmt":"2016-02-22T12:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=283"},"modified":"2025-01-25T15:49:58","modified_gmt":"2025-01-25T20:49:58","slug":"name-of-the-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/name-of-the-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Name of the Game Is Stud (Tom Paxton, The Gaslight)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Name of the Game Is Stud (Tom Paxton)\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6dHSSQJT8Es?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>One of the great things about LPs was that they had liner notes on the back of the jacket, which meant that you didn\u2019t have to buy them to read them. I spent hours in Harvard Square, at Minuteman, Briggs &amp; Briggs, Discount Records, and the Harvard Coop, reading liner notes in the folk and blues sections. The notes on one album would mention someone I\u2019d never heard of, so I\u2019d go over to that bin and read the notes on their album, too.<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-285 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/ain-t-that-news.jpg?resize=250%2C250\" alt=\"ain-t-that-news\" width=\"250\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/ain-t-that-news.jpg?w=250&amp;ssl=1 250w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/ain-t-that-news.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s how I got to Tom Paxton\u2014Pete Seeger had recorded several of his songs, which could also have steered me his way\u2014but I have a vague memory of reading the notes on the back of his second album at Minuteman, and asking my mother to buy it for me. In any case, I got it, and I was hooked. I was a nine- or ten-year-old boy, so I didn\u2019t go for the love songs much, but he had some rambling hobo songs that reminded me of Woody and Cisco, and some political songs that were smart and fit together in neat ways, and some that were just fun, like \u201cThe Name of the Game is Stud.\u201d I didn\u2019t know what stud poker was\u2014to be frank, I\u2019m still not sure\u2014but the tune and the story were catchy and I listened to that album so much that I think at some point I just realized that I knew all the words.<\/p>\n<p>What I didn\u2019t know at that point, and never noticed until I sang this a couple of weeks ago, for the first time in years, was that it is about the scene at the <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-288\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Kettle-of-Fish-297x300.jpg?resize=208%2C210\" alt=\"Kettle of Fish\" width=\"208\" height=\"210\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Kettle-of-Fish.jpg?w=297&amp;ssl=1 297w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Kettle-of-Fish.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 208px) 100vw, 208px\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/gaslight-rag\/\">Gaslight Caf\u00e9<\/a>, the mythic stomping grounds of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/black-mountain-blues\/\">Dave Van Ronk<\/a>, and Tom, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/see-see-rider\/\">Mississippi John Hurt<\/a>, and Hugh Romney (later Wavy Gravy), who was married there by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/cincinnati-flow-rag\/\">Reverend Gary Davis<\/a>. When Dave waxed nostalgic, he would talk about long nights drinking at the Kettle of Fish, the bar upstairs where he and the other musicians hung out between sets. And he talked about Sam Hood,<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-289\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Sam-Hood.jpg?resize=124%2C145\" alt=\"Sam Hood\" width=\"124\" height=\"145\" \/> who ran the Gaslight and is presumably the &#8220;rounder named Sam&#8221; in this song, and the marathon poker games they would hold upstairs\u2014though in his stories, the master cardsharp was Sam\u2019s father, Clarence:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGod, that man was a great poker player! There were regular games all the time, and one night I was bumped out early on\u2014I was clearly in a different league from the guys he liked to play with\u2014and Clarence let me kibbitz his hand. I sat there and watched him fold hands that I would have held onto for dear life. Once he threw away a straight! And he was right every goddamn time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tom Paxton&#8217;s ode to the late-night poker games upstairs from the Kettle of Fish and the Gaslight Cafe on MacDougal Street during the heyday of the Greenwich Village folk scene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Name of 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