Sittin' On Top Of The World (Jerry Lucas & Bluesbound)
Cover of "Sittin' On Top Of The World" as performed by bluesmeister/master luthier Jerry Lucas & Bluesbound, with Michael Storm on lead guitar. Jerry dedicated this version to the great late Hubert Sumlin who transitioned to that great concert in the sky this past Dec. 4, 2011.
Jerry Lucas can be contacted at [email protected] or 404-285-1978, where his band Bluesbound is available for gigs in the South Metro Atlanta area. Jerry is also a master luthier, works magic on stringed instruments and is highly recommended.
"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. The song was first recorded by the Mississippi Sheiks in 1930 (on the Okeh label, No. 8784), became a popular crossover hit for the band, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008.
"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 setbacks, and the song has been described as a "simple, elegant distillation of the Blues".
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). 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".
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 It appears as the chorus of an unpublished song composed by Irving Berlin in May 1914: "If you don't want my peaches / You'd better stop shaking my tree".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").