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Sitting on Top of the World
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"Sitting on Top of the World" (also rendered as "Sittin' on Top of the World") is a folk-blues song written by Walter Vinson and Lonnie Chatmon, core members of the Mississippi Sheiks, a popular country blues band of the 1930s. Walter Vinson claimed to have composed “Sitting on Top of the World” one morning after playing a white dance in Greenwood, Mississippi. However, the melody was almost certainly taken from Tommy Johnson.
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Encyclopedia
"Sitting on Top of the World" (also rendered as "Sittin' on Top of the World") is a folk-blues song written by Walter Vinson and Lonnie Chatmon, core members of the Mississippi Sheiks, a popular country blues band of the 1930s. Walter Vinson claimed to have composed “Sitting on Top of the World” one morning after playing a white dance in Greenwood, Mississippi. However, the melody was almost certainly taken from Tommy Johnson. Victor Records, the copyright holders of Johnson's 'Big Road Blues', sued OKeh Records and settled out of court. The song was first recorded by the Mississippi Sheiks in 1930 (on the Okeh label, No. 8784), became a popular cross-over hit for the band, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008.
In May 1930 Charlie Patton recorded a version of the song (with altered lyrics) called “Some Summer Day” During the next few years cover-versions of "Sitting on Top of the World" were recorded by a number of artists: The Two Poor Boys, The Famous Hokum Boys, Big Bill Broonzy, Sam Collins, Milton Brown and Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys. After Milton Brown recorded it for Bluebird Records the song became a staple in the repertoire of western swing bands.
"Sitting on Top of the World" has become a standard of traditional American music. The song has been widely recorded in a variety of different styles – folk, blues, country, bluegrass, rock – often with considerable variations and/or additions to the original verses. The lyrics convey a stoic optimism in the face of emotional set-backs and the song has been described as a “simple, elegant distillation of the Blues”.
This song and its related variations should not be confused with totally different songs of the same name by The Pogues (1993) and Amanda Marshall (1996).
Antecedents
The title line of "Sitting on Top of the World" was probably borrowed from a well-known popular song of the 1920s, "I'm Sitting on Top of Lewis Quinn", written by Ray Henderson, Sam Lewis and Joe Young (popularised by Al Jolson in 1926). However the two songs are distinct, both musically and lyrically (apart from the title).
Claims are made that "Sitting on Top of the World" was derived from the earlier songs: "How Long, How Long" by Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell, a blues hit recorded in 1928, and Carr & Blackwell's follow-up song "You Got To Reap What You Sow" (1929), with Tampa Red on bottleneck guitar. It has also been suggested that Tampa Red composed the melody of "Sitting on Top of the World".
Structure
Lyrically “Sitting Top of the World” has a simple structure consisting of a series of rhyming couplets, each followed by the two-line chorus. The structural economy of the song seems to be conducive to creative invention, giving the song a dynamic flexibility exemplified by the numerous and diverse versions that exist.
Lyrics
The numerous versions of “Sitting Top of the World” recorded since 1930 have been characterized by variations to the lyrics. The original lyrics, as recorded by the Mississippi Sheiks in 1930.
“Sittin’ on Top of the World”, recorded by Howlin’ Wolf in 1957 (and published under his birth-name Chester Burnett), is a well-known and widely-used version of this song. This was the version recorded by Cream in 1968.
Howlin’ Wolf shortened the song to just three verses. The first and third verses are similar to the second and fifth verses of the Mississippi Sheiks’ song. The middle verse of Howlin’ Wolf's version – “Worked all the summer, worked all the fall / Had to take Christmas, in my overalls” – was an addition to the 1930 original, but had previously appeared in a version recorded by Ray Charles in 1949.
The ‘peaches’ verse has a long history in popular music. It appears as the chorus of an unpublished song composed by Irving Berlin in May 1914: “If you don't want my peaches / You'd better stop shaking my tree”. The song "Mamma's Got the Blues", written by Clarence Williams and S. Martin and recorded by Bessie Smith in 1923, has the line: "If you don't like my peaches then let my orchard be". In her version of "St. Louis Blues", Ella Fitzgerald sang, "If you don't like my peaches, why do you shake my tree? / Stay out of my orchard, and let my peach tree be". In 1929 Blind Lemon Jefferson recorded “Peach Orchard Mama” ("... you swore nobody’d pick your fruit but me / I found three kid men shaking down your peaches free"). In later years lines using similar imagery were used in “Matchbox” by Carl Perkins and “The Joker” by the Steve Miller Band. Ahmet Ertegun was able to convince Miller to pay him US$50,000, claiming authorship of the line in his song "Lovey Dovey". This verse and its ubiquitous usage is an example of the tradition of ‘floating lyrics’ (also called 'maverick stanzas') in folk-music tradition. ‘Floating lyrics’ have been described as “lines that have circulated so long in folk communities that tradition-steeped singers call them instantly to mind and rearrange them constantly, and often unconsciously, to suit their personal and community aesthetics”.
Notable cover versions
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