Jim Adams is gentlemanly and gracious host of Song Lyric Sunday.  Jim says:
This week’s Song Lyric Sunday theme should be real easy, as there are a lot of songs that involve Cards/Dice/Gamble/Lose/Win and I am sure that everyone will be able to find something.
Here are the “rules”:

• Post the lyrics to the song of your choice, whether it fits the theme or not.
• Please try to include the songwriter(s) – it’s a good idea to give credit where credit is due.
• Make sure you also credit the singer/band and if you desire you can provide a link to where you found the lyrics.
• Link to the YouTube video, or pull it into your post so others can listen to the song.
• Ping back to this post will eventually work, as long as you are being patient, but you can also place your link in the comments if you don’t like to wait.
• Read at least one other person’s blog, so we can all share new and fantastic music and create amazing new blogging friends in the process.
• Feel free to suggest future prompts.
• Have fun and enjoy the music.

photo from The Official Website of Frankie Laine

“Moonlight Gambler” is a song written by Bob Hilliard and Phil Springer and performed by Frankie Laine featuring Ray Conniff and His Orchestra, released in October 1956.

My mom had Frankie Laine albums as I was growing up and this was one of my favorites by this wonderful singer.

Frankie Laine (born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio; March 30, 1913 – February 6, 2007) was an American singer, songwriter, and actor whose career nearly spanned 75 years, from his first concerts in 1930 with a marathon dance company to his final performance of “That’s My Desire” in 2005. Often billed as “America’s Number One Song Stylist”, his other nicknames include “Mr. Rhythm”, “Old Leather Lungs”, and “Mr. Steel Tonsils”. He sang well-known theme songs for many movie Western soundtracks, including 3:10 To Yuma, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and Blazing Saddles, although his recordings were not charted as a country & western.

A clarion-voiced singer with lots of style, able to fill halls without a microphone, and one of the biggest hit-makers of late 1940s/early 1950s, Laine had more than 70 charted records, 21 gold records, and worldwide sales of over 100 million records. Originally a rhythm and blues influenced jazz singer, Laine excelled at virtually every music style, eventually expanding to such varied genres as popular standards, gospel, folk, country, western/Americana, rock ‘n’ roll, and the occasional novelty number.

Laine was the first and biggest of a new breed of singers who rose to prominence in the post–World War II era. This new, raw, emotionally charged style seemed at the time to signal the end of the previous era’s singing styles and was, indeed, a harbinger of the rock ‘n’ roll music that was to come.

You can gamble for match sticks, you can gamble for gold
The stakes may be heavy or small
But if you haven’t gambled for love and lost, then you haven’t gambled at all

They call me a moonlight gambler
I’ve gambled for love and lost
When I gamble for love and it isn’t in the cards
Oh, what heartaches it can cost me

Win or lose, I’m a moonlight gambler
And a winner is what I long to be
So I’ll gamble for love just as long as I live
Till the day Lady Luck smiles at me

You can gamble for match sticks
You can gamble for gold
The stakes may be heavy or small
But if you haven’t gambled for love and lost
Then you haven’t gambled at all

No, if you haven’t gambled for love in the moonlight
Then you haven’t gambled at all

So I’ll gamble for love just as long as I live
Till the day Lady Luck smiles at me

They call me the moonlight gambler
They call me the moonlight gambler
Songwriters: Philip Springer / Bob Hilliard