{"id":5777,"date":"2025-05-31T09:24:05","date_gmt":"2025-05-31T13:24:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=5777"},"modified":"2025-05-31T09:42:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-31T13:42:08","slug":"ace-in-the-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/ace-in-the-hole\/","title":{"rendered":"Ace in the Hole (Dave Van Ronk, among others)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ace in the Hole (Dave Van Ronk and others)\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FUVO0M08GvM?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>I first heard &#8220;Ace in the Hole&#8221; on Dave Van Ronk&#8217;s 1963 album with the Red Onion Jazz Band,\u00a0<em>In the Tradition<\/em>. It was written around 1909 by a couple of obscure songwriters, James Dempsey and George Mitchell, and is a musical evocation of the New York\u00a0<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-5437\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/In-the-Tradition-LP-e1729819363380.jpg?resize=210%2C212&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"210\" height=\"212\" \/>borderline underworld limned by Damon Runyon in the stories that inspired <em>Guys and Dolls<\/em>. Dave was a devotee of this kind of New Yorkiana &#8212; his rock band, the Hudson Dusters, was named for a notorious street gang of the 1800s &#8212; so he naturally jumped on it.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m pretty sure Dave picked it up from Lu Watters&#8217;s Yerba Buena Jazz Band, a San Francisco group that was one of the first and best white trad revival bands, who recorded it in the 1940s with the New Orleans trumpeter Bunk Johnson &#8212; Watters&#8217;s outfit is not well remembered these days, but Dave was a dedicated &#8220;moldy fig&#8221; traditionalist in his teens, devoted to Bunk&#8217;s work, and developed an appreciation for the San Francisco bands during a shore visit in his brief period as a merchant seaman.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d heard Dave&#8217;s version and knew that provenance, but thought of it as an obscurity until I did some research for this post and found it was recorded by over a hundred groups and artists, starting with a bunch of minor white jazz bands in the 1920s, including one in Berlin, then various western and hillbilly swing bands, then Frankie Laine, Connie Francis, Bobby Darin and Johnny Mercer, Judy Henske, and a lot of others, including a bizarre version from 1969 by the honky-tonk singer Hank Thompson, rewritten as a critique of hippies, protesters, and other good folks of that time, which could easily be revived by the Trump crowd today. (I&#8217;m not linking it, but it&#8217;s available online if you want to check it out.)<\/p>\n<p>Dave&#8217;s original recording only had the one verse and one and a half <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3299 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/Van-Ronk-and-the-tin-pan-LP.jpg?resize=200%2C200&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/Van-Ronk-and-the-tin-pan-LP.jpg?w=200&amp;ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/Van-Ronk-and-the-tin-pan-LP.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/>choruses, with the rest of the space taken up by solos from the band, and he never played it solo until near the end of his life. Then he worked up a really nice guitar chart, wrote a second verse, and filled out the second chorus &#8212; as I&#8217;ve noted in my posts for &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/thatll-never-happen-no\/\">That&#8217;ll Never Happen No More<\/a>&#8221; and &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/somebody-else-not\/\">Somebody Else, Not Me<\/a>,&#8221; he regularly wrote additional lyrics for songs he thought needed some help. I never learned his new verse, but use his extra lyric for the second chorus, though I&#8217;ve changed one line that didn&#8217;t seem to fit the theme, staying true to his memory by using the term <em>clydes<\/em>, meaning &#8220;squares,&#8221; which I learned from him.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of archaic hipster argot: a <em>Missouri bankroll<\/em> was a roll of one dollar bills (or sometimes paper cut to the same size) with a couple of high-denomination bills on the outside, flashed to create the illusion that the bearer was loaded. <em>Tenderloin<\/em> was a common term in the late 19th and early 20th century for prostitution districts, extrapolated from the original Tenderloin, the Manhattan prostitution district running from about 14th to 42th Streets between 6th and 8th Avenues, so named (according to a popular legend) when a new police captain was assigned to that district, which like all such districts was famous for bribery, and commented that he&#8217;d been eating chuck steak all his life and was looking forward to some tenderloin.<\/p>\n<p>I started playing this when Sandrine and I were living in New Orleans in the early 2000s, staying with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/iko-iko\/\">David and Roselyn<\/a>, and jamming with them and whoever else dropped by in the evenings. They had a fake book with this in it, and no one else knew it until one night a trumpet player showed up who was from the Bay Area, so we played it and I&#8217;ve been messing with it ever since.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I first heard &#8220;Ace in the Hole&#8221; on Dave Van Ronk&#8217;s 1963 album with the Red Onion Jazz Band,\u00a0In the Tradition. It was written around 1909 by a couple of obscure songwriters, James Dempsey and George Mitchell, and is a musical evocation of the New York\u00a0borderline underworld limned by Damon Runyon in the stories that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/ace-in-the-hole\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Ace in the Hole (Dave Van Ronk, among others)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/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":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - 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When I was studying with him in 1976-77, he\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Sunday Street","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Sunday-Street.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1611,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/aint-she-sweet\/","url_meta":{"origin":5777,"position":2},"title":"Ain&#8217;t She Sweet\/ Five Foot Two (Guy Van Duser)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"July 1, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The only lick I ever copped from the astonishing Guy Van Duser, with reminiscences of Guy and the Nameless Coffeehouse, and, yet again, Dave Van Ronk.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Nameless LP","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Nameless-LP-297x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1360,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/old-man\/","url_meta":{"origin":5777,"position":3},"title":"The Old Man (Bob Dylan)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 10, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Dave Van Ronk took pride in the fact that he recognized Bob Dylan's talent early, back when a lot of people thought Bobby was just a weird kid with too much nervous energy and a scratchy voice. Dave and his wife Terri Thal were major boosters for the kid, mentoring\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/images\/davedylan.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":346,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/bottle-of-wine\/","url_meta":{"origin":5777,"position":4},"title":"Bottle of Wine (nostalgie de la boue)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"February 23, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"One of Tom Paxton's most popular songs, and a prime example of nostalgie de la boue (as Dave Van Ronk would explain) set to a catchy tune.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"dave-&-tom","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/dave-tom-231x300.gif?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1331,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/buddy-boldens-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":5777,"position":5},"title":"Buddy Bolden&#8217;s Blues (Jelly Roll Morton)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 14, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Dave Van Ronk had numerous musical heroes,\u00a0 but Jelly Roll Morton was number one. Over the years, I got used to the idea that if I stayed late enough at his place we would likely end up listening to Morton records (often back to back with Phillipe Koutev's Bulgarian ensemble),\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/jelly-roll-morton-commodore-300x295.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5777"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5784,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5777\/revisions\/5784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}