According to Merle Travis, the 1947 hit song, “Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette,” was copied from another song titled “The Dark Town Poker Club.”

Merle commented, “My dad was a coal miner but he never did smoke. I often heard him say that if he was a foreman in the mines, he would never hire a guy who smoked because every time you ask a guy who smoked to do something you had to wait until he rolled another cigarette. And that’s where the idea for that song came from.  Tex  Williams needed a song to record and he asked me to write one for him. So I copied “The Dark Town Poker Club” and wrote the song from that.”

“Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette” entered the country music charts July 5th, 1947 and made it to number one, where it stuck for 16 weeks. It was on the country charts for 23 weeks. The single also was number one on the pop music charts for six weeks.

Williams re-recorded the song in 1968 and that version peaked at # 32 and was on the charts for 10 weeks.

Doug Davis
Country Music Classics