Soldier Bible Card Deck Song

Subject: BS: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: GUEST,skivee
Date: 29 Jan 07 - 11:12 PM

My band played a great job in Orlando last Friday.
It was a convention of Harley-Davidson dealers from all around the world. There was a great sound system set up for us. We were the kick off band as the dealers came into the hall. Before they arrived there was music being piped into the system. I became aware of this song wafting slowly (about40 bpm) past us.
A soldier is getting dressed down by some superior for having a deck of playing cards in his uniform pocket. The soldier defends himself by saying that he keeps the cards to remind him of events and people in the bible...The Ace represents God, the deuce is 2 of something or other, the 3 is the holy trinity, and on and on. They go through all 13 cards of a suit, at 40 plodding bpm.
By the end of the song, my gums, eyes, and brain were bleeding. I wanted to kill the composer, the band, the record distributors.
Am I just being a snot, or is this song about the worst piece of maukish crap ever recorded.
Oh, and by the way...if our young soldier wants to be reminded of the bible, why doesn't he just carry a pocket bible with him?????

Subject: RE: BS: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Alec
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 12:12 AM

The song is "Deck of Cards" to our country's undying shame it was a hit on 5 seperate occasions in the U.K. between 1959 & 1973
(4 times for Wink Martindale & once for Max Bygraves)
You are not being a snot it is mawkish crap.

Subject: RE: BS: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Joe Offer
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 03:01 AM

As you can see from the crosslinks above, "Deck of Cards" was once one of the most-requested songs here at Mudcat. First request was thread 140. I think I'm glad we're beyond that now, but I have to say that sometimes I get a kick out of mawkish songs.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: The Walrus
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 04:07 AM

"...[i]Oh, and by the way...if our young soldier wants to be reminded of the bible, why doesn't he just carry a pocket bible with him?????[/i]..."
Because you can't gamble easily with a bible?

Subject: RE: BS: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 04:53 AM

Because you can't gamble easily with a bible?
I'll bet you a bible you can!
Cheers
Dave

Subject: RE: BS: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Jean(eanjay)
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 05:06 AM

I remember it. It seems a strange choice to play for a convention of Harley Davidson dealers.

Subject: RE: BS: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: The Barden of England
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 05:40 AM

But the Les Barker version is a treasure.

Subject: RE: BS: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Jean(eanjay)
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 05:45 AM

My father used to recite it and it definitely sounded better than the Max Bygraves' version.

Subject: RE: BS: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Jean(eanjay)
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 06:16 AM

Though its not to be listened to if you're feeling a bit low.

Subject: RE: BS: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: skipy
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 07:10 AM

I know, for I am that cricket bag.
Skipy

Subject: RE: BS: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Mr Red
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 07:13 AM

more like a box

Subject: RE: BS: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Bill D
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 09:05 AM

Red Shipley used to play it on "Stained Glass Bluegrass" on Sonday mornings.....it fit right in with dying "rebel soldiers" worried about their souls and incessant replays of "God's Coloring Book".

Subject: RE: BS: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Cluin
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 11:33 AM

Nobody ever wrote a song like this about a Playboy/Penthouse/Hustler magazine.

Subject: RE: BS: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Captain Ginger
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 11:41 AM

Hey - now there's a challenge...

Subject: RE: BS: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: RangerSteve
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 01:38 PM

It was also recorded by T.Texas Tyler and Tex Ritter. Along with "Hillbilly Heaven", it ranks as the worst of country music. Of course, that's only my opnion, and you are weldome to disagree with me.

No. Screw diplimacy. It's the worst. And if you disagree, you're wrong.

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 03:51 PM

Barden's right - the Les Barker version is a treasure. If only he had been given a visa to carry out his pre-arranged US tour last year, he might have been able to perform it for more US catters.......

Kitty

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: oldhippie
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 04:36 PM

Rex Sovine also recorded a version as "Vietnam Deck of Cards".

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 05:09 PM

David Frost ( back in the 60s ) did a great parody ( probably written by the Monty Python crowd) wherein a soldier is caught playing cricket in church and is called upon to explain his actions. He says things like, "when I see the 6 stumps, I am reminded that that is exacly half the number of Christ's disciples, and when I see the ball spinning through the air, I think of God's own world spinning in the firmament" - and so on! It worked quite well.

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: 12-stringer
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 05:38 PM

Can't disagree with Ranger Steve, but this isn't the worst of country music -- it dates back to at least the 18th century and comes from the UK. So it's gotta be the worst of traditional folk literature of the English-speaking world!

My favorite version is, of course, "The Hillbilly's Deck of Cards" by Simon Crum (aka Ferlin Husky), from the 50s, in which a gambling junket to Reno turns amusingly bad for a hillbilly sucker and Simon uses the deck of cards to explain what all happened to him.

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: RangerSteve
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 06:06 PM

12-stringer - thanks, I was unaware that I could blame another country and tradition.

Oldhippie mentioned Red Sovine. I'm not surprised that Red was also guilty. Red seemed to have settled into a career of consistently bad songs. "Deck of Cards" probably attracted him like a magnet.

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Skivee
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 08:47 PM

It warms my heart to hear that so many catters loathe this turd as much as I did.
I'm also surprised that the Joe-Clones have moved the thread above the BS line...Well, I suppose there is a certain amount of "music" in it.
Now, if I can only undo the damage... to the kids.

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: GUEST,Obie
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 09:13 PM

Robert Service wrote a poem about a soldier comrade whose pocket bible stopped a bullet and ended saying that a deck of cards saved him the same way. A much better story!

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Skivee
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 09:29 PM

When I styarted paying attention to the song, I thought it might be the very same Robert Service tale put to music. Sadly...very sadly, I was wrong.

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: GUEST,DK
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 04:47 AM

How nice to see that others dislike this nauseating garbage, it also puts me in mind of the
patently false 'there are no atheists in foxholes.'

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: skipy
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 04:53 AM

Clive Staples Lewis was an atheist in a foxhole.
Skipy

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: The Doctor
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 05:31 AM

Mike Harding did a brief parody, recorded on 'Mrs Harding's Kid', which finished up: One card took out his privates and spread them on the bench. The sergeant leaned over and said,'Oooh, snap!'

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Scrump
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 05:55 AM

I remember the Mike Harding version - you beat me to it, Doc :-)

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 08:20 PM

I googled the song lyrics, and everybody and nobody is credited with writing it. It's the true folk processw...every artist copyrights the song as his/her arrangement. However, Wikipedia and Answers.com both credit T. Texas Tyler, the original singer, as author of Deck of Cards.

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: GUEST,Dave Sunshine
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 11:43 PM

The Robert Service parody is wonderful - suspense to the end!!

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Scrump
Date: 01 Feb 07 - 04:56 AM

According to a couple of websites It was also recorded by Phil Harris in 1948, and Tex Ritter the same year (which was apparently the year its author T Texas Tyler recorded it).

I remember hearing the Phil Harris version (I think it may be on an album of his "Greatest Hits" I have somewhere).

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: GUEST,Geoff the Duck
Date: 02 Feb 07 - 04:55 AM

GUEST,Tunesmith - The cricket version of the story was from a radio show called I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again (ISIRTA) which pre dated the Pythons. The team were John Cleese, Graham Garden, Tim Brooke Taylor, David Hatch, Jo Kendall and Bill Oddie. In some early episodes, Graham Chapman was one of the writers.
Obviously Cleese went on to Pythons, Oddie, Garden and Brooke Taylor became the Goodies. Jo Kendall became a character actress and David Hatch became controller of BBc Radio 4 and was never heard of again...
The show always ended with "a play". The cricket/deck of cards was at the end of one based on the Great Escape with British POWs (Shouldn't that be Prisoners Of War - P'sOW?) making a break from a German camp. They are eventually found by the Germans in a church and holding a cricket bat....
The rest is Geography...
Quack!
Geoff the Duck.

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Duke
Date: 02 Feb 07 - 08:32 AM

Seems like a lot of people do not like this song. Too bad! Thanks to this post I was able to find the lyics. I like it! I also liked Hillbilly Heaven! Go figure.

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 02 Feb 07 - 03:05 PM

Duke, perhaps you or someone else who appreciates this song might know of this old one collected in the 1920s and sung by Ed Lloyd (Af-Am). I'll give one verse here:

You can play the ace and tray,
But it sho' will lead you astray.
It's awful sad when the Holy Ghost is gone.

White gave four verses, but I think there may be more.

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Skivee
Date: 02 Feb 07 - 04:02 PM

Hey, Duke.
You are certainly entitled to your opinion. That's why there are a gazillion songs rather than one.
It wasn't so much the lyrics that sucked my brains out, as the ponderous pace and tedious delivery. Clearly the singer wanted us to know that his slowness meant that he had AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE about how God and Jesus love decks of cards or something.
I suppose that at a faster pace, it would merely have been a song that didn't appeal to my tastes. This was rather like listening a glaciers receding. gaaaaaah

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 02 Feb 07 - 06:22 PM

T. Texas Tyler is the composer. Don't have original date.
BMI Work #289054
Publishers of this Work:
Fort Knox Music Co.
Trio Music Co. Inc. 31054924
Universal Songs of Polygram ...

Tex Ritter recorded it in 1961, and Tex Williams in 1966.
"Cowboy's Deck of Cards" was recorded by Cowboy Copas, 1963.
"Vietnam Deck of Cards" by Red Sovine, 1968
"Hillbilly Deck of Cards" by Ferlin Husky, 1963.

These dates not necessarily the earliest for these artists; the earliest I found. Many other recordings of this favorite of the Vietnam years.

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Uke
Date: 02 Feb 07 - 09:42 PM

In 1960s New Zealand, several 'rugby' versions were constructed, which is pretty appropriate in this rugby-crazed country. There was a 7" single released and I found some lyrics in an old student revue songsheet. Another single came out in the late 1970s called 'The Rugby Deck of Cards'. They're all pretty tongue in cheek and generally amusing.

In one of the postings above, 12-stringer said that the decks of cards theme: "...dates back to at least the 18th century and comes from the UK"

I wonder if anyone knows of any of these early versions???

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 02 Feb 07 - 11:51 PM

I suspect there are some oldies from UK, but off-hand I don't know any.
Perhaps 12-stringer would post one.

Decks with 52 cards go way back (tarot-type) but when did the 52-card Anglo-American or 'poker' deck show up?

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: GUEST,Guest, Tim
Date: 03 Feb 07 - 12:24 AM

T. Texas Tyler recorded the song in 1948 (4 Star 1228) and it reached #2 in April 1948.

Tex Ritter did his first recording of the song in 1948 and had a #10 with it then.

Bill Anderson had a #60 with the song in 1991.

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Sooz
Date: 03 Feb 07 - 05:38 AM

What about the Les Barker version - brilliant!

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: eddie1
Date: 03 Feb 07 - 05:55 AM

Not exactly thread creep (Well alright then!) but a one-time workmate of mine was in a POW camp on the Burma Railroad. He reckoned he didn't have such a terrible time as many although the worst torture inflicted on him was when a fellow POW had a banjo and the strings rusted and snapped and the Commandant got a new set of strings.

Charley said their worst deprivations were cigarettes and ways to pass the time.. He said they would smoke anything – leaves, grasses, even cabbage and they had to roll them in large leaves until, oh bliss! The camp received a huge parcel of pocket-size New Testaments, courtesy of The Gideons! Great size for rolling cigarettes and for making packs of playing cards., fulfilling both their needs at the same time!

Now that story is worthy of a song .

Eddie

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Duke
Date: 03 Feb 07 - 10:36 AM

Sorry, Q, I never heard of that one.

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Compton
Date: 03 Feb 07 - 11:02 AM

Geoff the Duck...I'm not sure that's quite right...unless it was pinched from ISIRTA.....I have the vinyl LP with David Frost and John Cleese..."Forst Over Britain"....Almost sure it was there first...ALTHOUGh I'm sorry I'll Read That Again..definitely had it's moments!...Didn't John Cleese sing "I've Got A Ferret Sticking Up My Nose (Bill Oddie?) in that??

Sorry about the thread drift!!

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 03 Feb 07 - 02:10 PM

Without dates for the Frost/Cleese and the ISIRTA episode, I couldn't say which borrowed. That said, Cleese was a member of both teams. He could easily have been the writer of the item and as such, perfectly entitled to use it as often as needed.
My favourite rhyme from ISIRTA was in the play about Robin Hood in a verse which ended
"And she was mistress of her art,
Willikins, Wallikins, Rhubarb tart"
Quack!
Geoff.

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 03 Feb 07 - 02:42 PM

Did some web searching. Found show details at the very bottom of this page BLICKY.
The show was from Series Nine in 1973, so it looks as if the Frost Show would have been much earlier.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Uke
Date: 03 Feb 07 - 09:00 PM

Er, just to return to the Deck of Cards songs.

Picking up on Q's posting, I still wonder where the idea of using the various denominations, suits, combinations etc. to symbolise Christian belief, soldier's complaints, rugby etc. - first originates and if it is indeed 'traditional'.

Perhaps it comes from an old fortune-telling routine? (like the Tarot)

Or is it an old song formula, like using the alphabet (as in 'The Sailor's Alphabet')? perhaps it is more often used as a recitation than a song?

Subject: RE: Soldier Bible Card Deck Song
From: Uke
Date: 03 Feb 07 - 10:15 PM

Well, after doing a little searching I found this article, which has an Afghanistan War version and dates the 'Soldier's Deck of Cards' back to a 1865 broadsheet printing (and French versions in 1778 and 1809). The article doesn't actually identify these original publications, but does reference some more recent articles.