Sitting on Top of the World

Not to be confused with I'm Sitting on Top of the World.
"Sitting on Top of the World"
Single by Mississippi Sheiks
B-side "Lovely One in This Town"
Released 1930 (1930)
Format 10" 78 rpm record
Recorded February 17, 1930
Genre Blues
Length 3:10
Label Okeh (Cat. no. 8784)
Writer(s) Walter Vinson, Lonnie Chatmon
Mississippi Sheiks singles chronology
"Alberta Blues"/ "Winter Time Blues"
(1930)		 "Sitting on Top of the World"
(1930)		 "Stop and Listen Blues"/ "Driving That Thing"
(1930)

"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.[1]

The song was first recorded by the Mississippi Sheiks in 1930 (on the Okeh label, No. 8784). It became a popular crossover hit for the band, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008.[2]

In May 1930, Charlie Patton recorded a version of the song (with altered lyrics) called “Some Summer Day”[3] 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, Doc Watson, Big Bill Broonzy, Sam Collins, Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies, 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.[1]

"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 of the original song convey a stoic optimism in the face of emotional setbacks, and the song has been described as a “simple, elegant distillation of the Blues”.

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 the World", 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).[4]

Claims are made that "Sitting on Top of the World" was derived from the earlier songs: Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell's "You Got To Reap What You Sow" (1929).[4] It has also been suggested that Tampa Red cemented the melody of "Sitting on Top of the World" in his version from the same year.[5]

This article previously stated that "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." If there was a lawsuit it would have been over the Sheik's "Stop and Listen" which is very similar to "Big Road."[6]

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.

Harmonically the song differs from a standard 12 bar blues, and though the original has a clearly bluesy harmonic feeling, including blue notes in the melody, there is some disagreement about whether it is really a blues.

“Sitting Top of the World” is a strophic nine-bar blues. Bar nine provides rhythmic separation between stanzas, the end of one stanza and the relatively large pickup at the beginning of the next.[7]

Lyrics

The numerous versions of “Sitting Top of the World” recorded since 1930 have been characterized by variations to 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.[8]

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 Jerry Lee Lewis; "The Joker" by the Steve Miller Band; an early version of "Pipeliner Blues" by Moon Mullican; and, most directly, "If You Don't Want My Peaches, Don't Shake My Tree" by Fox. 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”.[9]

Recordings by other artists
"Sitting on Top of the World"
From The Cold Mountain soundtrack. It was performed by Jack White for the film, in which he played the character Georgia
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References

  1. 1 2 Cary Ginell, Milton Brown and the Founding of Western Swing, University of Illinois Press, 1994, p. 284 - ISBN 0-252-02041-3
  2. ↑ 2008 Grammy Hall of Fame List
  3. ↑ ‘Some Summer Day – Version 2’, The Bluegrass Messengers web-site.
  4. 1 2 "Song Genealogy from "Sittin' On Top Of The World"". Retrieved 12 June 2007.
  5. ↑ Liner notes by Stephen Calt, Tampla Red also recorded "Things 'bout Comin' My Way" with lyrics in 1932 for Vocolian and instrumentally in 1934. Reference Liner Notes "The Guitar Wizard" released by Coloumbia in 1994. Michael Stewart & Don Kent on the album Stop and Listen Blues (a collection of Mississippi Sheiks’ recordings), Mamlish S-3804.
  6. ↑ Evans, David. Tommy Johnson. Studio Vista (1973), p. 68. SBN 289 70150 3
  7. ↑ The Musical Frameworks of Five Blues Schemes. Nicholas Stoia. Ph. D. Thesis/dissertation. City University of New York. 2008. pages 155, 159,160
  8. 1 2 3 Howlin' Wolf interviewed on the Pop Chronicles (1969)
  9. ↑ Carl Lindahl, ‘Thrills and Miracles: Legends of Lloyd Chandler’, Journal of Folklore Research, Bloomington: May-Dec 2004, Vol. 41, Issue 2/3, pp. 133-72.
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