"On Top of Old Smoky" (often spelled "Smokey") is a traditional folk song of the United States. As recorded by The Weavers, the song reached the pop music charts in 1951. It is catalogued as Roud Folk Song Index No. 414.
"On Top of Old Smoky" (often spelled "Smokey") is a traditional folk song of the United States. As recorded by The Weavers, the song reached the pop music charts in 1951. It is catalogued as Roud Folk Song Index No. 414.
It is unclear when, where and by whom the song was first sung. In historical times folk songs were the informal property of the communities that sang them, passed down through generations. They were published only when a curious person took the trouble to visit singers and document their songs, an activity that in America began only around the turn of the 20th century. [1] For this reason it is unlikely that an originator of "On Top of Old Smoky" could ever be identified.
One of the earliest versions of "On Top of Old Smoky" to be recorded in fieldwork was written down by the English folklorist Cecil Sharp, who during the First World War made three summer field trips to the Appalachian Mountains seeking folk songs, accompanied and assisted by Maud Karpeles. Sharp and Karpeles found to their delight that the Appalachians, then geographically isolated, were a strong preserve of traditional music and that many of the people they met were naturally gifted singers who knew a great number of songs. [2] They were also intrigued to find that many of the songs the people sang to them were versions of songs Sharp had earlier collected from people in rural England, suggesting that the ancestors of the Appalachian residents had brought them over from the old country.
In one version the first verse is the following;
The version of "On Top of Old Smoky" that Sharp and Karpeles collected was sung to them on 29 July 1916 by Miss Memory Shelton in Alleghany, Madison County, North Carolina. [4] Miss Shelton was part of a family several of whose members sang for Sharp. [5] Memory Shelton's version differs in notes, rhythm, and wording from the version most people know today, but only modestly so; for instance the words of the first verse are as follows:
On top of Old Smoky,
All covered in snow,
I lost my true lover
By sparking too slow.
where sparking is a now-rare word that means courting. [6] She also avoided the extreme prolongation of the syllables of Smoky and lover that are customary today, instead assigning just one musical beat to Smo- and lov- and two to -key and -er. [7] The version Miss Shelton sang has twelve verses. It was published twice; first in the preliminary volume of folk songs prepared by Sharp and Karpeles after their first summer of fieldwork (Sharp and Karpeles 1917), then in 1932 after Sharp's death, in the much larger compendium of Appalachian folk songs that Karpeles edited from the full notes of their three summers' fieldwork. [8]
American field workers were also active in the Appalachians. A (tuneless) text for "On Top of Old Smoky", similar to what Memory Shelton sang, was published by E. C. Perrow in 1915, slightly before Sharp's fieldwork. [9] In the following decades, still further variants of "On Top of Old Smoky" were recorded by fieldworkers in North Carolina [10] and Tennessee. [11]
The Appalachian tradition characteristically spawned multiple variants of the same song. In the extreme case, the same basic set of words could be sung to more than one tune, or the same tune could adopt a completely different set of words. The now-standard tune of "On Top of Old Smoky" competed with a completely different tune, which Sharp and Karpeles encountered when they returned to the Appalachians for further fieldwork in 1917, and versions of this tune were also found by later fieldworkers. [12] [13]
The tune of "On Top of Old Smoky" familiar to most people today was also paired with a completely different set of words in a folk song called "The Little Mohee", about a frontiersman who falls in love with an Indian maiden (or, in some versions, a sailor who falls in love with a South Seas maiden). [14] This tune was collected by the American fieldworkers Loraine Wyman and Howard Brockway in Pine Mountain, Kentucky [15] from a singer named Mary Ann Bagley, [16] and published by them in 1916, hence a year before the Sharp/Karpeles version mentioned above. [17]
Because the versions gathered in fieldwork vary so much, there is no particular version of "On Top of Old Smoky" that can lay claim to being the "authentic" or "original" version. The version that Sharp and Karpeles collected from Memory Shelton can be read online (see Sharp and Karpeles (1917), in References below), and the version by Pete Seeger that greatly popularized the song in modern times (see below) is also online. [18]
Old Smoky is plausibly a high mountain somewhere in the southern Appalachians, since so many versions recorded by fieldworkers were collected there. Possibilities include Kuwohi, named "Smoky Dome" by local Scotch-Irish inhabitants, but exactly which mountain it is may be lost to antiquity.
Cecil Sharp collected Appalachian folk songs just before the time when that music came to be "discovered" by the outside world and sold as a commercial product by the nascent recording industry, [19] a development which would ultimately create the modern genre of country music. The first to make a commercial recording of "On Top of Old Smoky" was George Reneau, "The Blind Musician of the Smoky Mountains", who worked as a busker in Knoxville, Tennessee, just west of the Appalachians. In 1925, Reneau made the trip to New York City to record the song, and others, for Vocalion (Vo 15366). [20] His version of "On Top of Old Smoky" used the alternative tune noted above. [21]
In the 1940s through the mid 1960s, the United States experienced a folk music revival, of which Pete Seeger was a leading figure. His music, some of it drawn from scholarly sources like Sharp, [22] was popular, and was disseminated widely in commercial recordings. Seeger modified a version of "On Top of Old Smoky" that he had learned in the Appalachians, [23] writing new words and banjo music. [20] He said that he thought that "certain verses go back to Elizabethan times." [20] [24] The sheet music for the song credited Seeger for "new words and music arrangement". [20]
The Weavers, a folk-singing group that Seeger had co-founded, recorded a very popular version of the song, using Seeger's arrangement, on 21 February 1951. [3] It was released by Decca Records as catalog number 27515, [25] reaching No. 2 on the Billboard chart and No. 1 on the Cash Box chart, and selling over a million copies.
The enormous popularity of those recordings (and others following in their wake - see below) led to the curious situation of the song re-attaining folk status. It is one of the few songs that most Americans know from childhood, and many are unaware of the mid-century recordings that promulgated it so widely. [26]
A number of artists released their versions following the success of the Weavers' recording. A version by Percy Faith & His Orchestra with Burl Ives on vocals reached No. 10 on the Billboard chart in 1951. [27] It became one of Burl Ives' signature songs. Vaughn Monroe & His Orchestra also had success with the song, reaching No. 8 on the chart in June 1951. [28]
Following its reintroduction to America by the Weavers, the song became a standard item of popular music, sung by Bing Crosby, [29] Perry Como, [30] Gene Autry, [31] as well as (in a brief excerpt) Elvis Presley. [32]
The country music singer Kenny Rogers sometimes used the first part of "On Top of Old Smoky" as a joke in concert. He played the opening bars of "Lucille", one of his big hits, and told the crowd something along the lines of "None of you know what song this is". When the audience replied with "Yes, we do", Rogers then began to sing "On Top of Old Smoky."
A great many versions followed in the ensuing decades. The following list is ordered chronologically.
In 1951, Swedish revue group Flickery Flies with Brita Borg recorded a Swedish version. [33] [34] This was during a time of collaboration with showbiz impresario and songwriter Povel Ramel [35] who in a revue paraphrased it as "Högt uppe på berget, jag har till en vän, förlorat en femma, jag lär nog aldrig se den utigen" (High up on the mountain, I have to a friend, lost a 5 kronor bill, I doubt I'll see it again).[ citation needed ]
Dave Van Ronk included the song on his album The Mayor of McDougal Street: Rarities 1957–1969. This version sounds much more Celtic in nature, with more vocal ornamentation and a looser rhythmic structure.
Television host Jack Narz recorded the song for his album Sing the Folk Hits With Jack Narz in 1959.
Bing Crosby included the song in a medley on his album 101 Gang Songs (1961).
Harry Belafonte recorded a version on his 1962 album The Midnight Special . On the sleeves notes it states 'He wrote and tried out OLD SMOKEY during his 1961 summer tour'.
Alvin and the Chipmunks covered the song for their 1962 album The Chipmunk Songbook .
Little Eva, singer of "The Loco-Motion", recorded a version called "Old Smokey Locomotion" (1963), with lyrics describing how the residents of Old Smokey caught on to The Locomotion.
In 1978, "On Top of Old Smokey" was released by Swedish pop group ABBA (with lead vocals by Frida) as part of a medley that also included "Pick a Bale of Cotton" and "Midnight Special". The medley featured as the B-side to the group's single "Summer Night City".
Bruce Springsteen performed the song in Portland, Oregon a few months after the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens as a tribute during The River Tour.
In 1991, [36] Swedish comedy group(s) Galenskaparna och After Shave performed a variant in their "Grisen i Säcken" revue.
Alternative country band The Gourds gangstered the lyrics to "On Top of Old Smoky" in the song "I'm troubled" on their 1998 release Gogitchyershinebox. [37] [38]
The Mexican trio in the Goofy short For Whom the Bulls Toil made in 1953, attempted to sing "On Top of Old Popocatépetl ". [ citation needed ]
The hit song from 1963 "On Top of Spaghetti" by Tom Glazer begins with the quatrain
On top of spaghetti
All covered with cheese,
I lost my poor meatball
When somebody sneezed.
This version too seems to have entered modern folklore, and it widely is known to children; one source writes of the original "On Top of Old Smoky" "if you can listen to it and not think about spaghetti, sneezing and meatballs, more power to you." [39] The song reached #7 in Canada. [40] The Dutch version, with as first line "een bord met spaghetti" ("a plate with spaghetti") by Rijk de Gooijer came out in 1963 as well. American musician Little Richard recorded a version of "On Top of Spaghetti" for his 1992 children's album Shake It All About .
In his medley "Schticks of One and Half a Dozen of the Other" (1963), Allan Sherman sings a modified version: "On top of Old Smokey, all covered with hair/Of course I'm referring to Smokey the Bear."
English football club Notts County use the song’s tune in their signature club song known as “The Wheelbarrow Song”, changing the lyrics to “I had a wheelbarrow, the wheel fell off.”
In 1953, Ernő Dohnányi used the tune (and also two other traditional American folktunes) in his final composition American Rhapsody.
Peter Seeger was an American folk singer-songwriter, musician and social activist. He was a fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, and had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, notably their recording of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene," which topped the charts for 14 weeks in 1950. Members of the Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, Seeger re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, counterculture, workers' rights, and environmental causes.
"We Shall Overcome" is a gospel song that is associated heavily with the U.S. civil rights movement. The origins of the song are unclear; it was thought to have descended from "I'll Overcome Some Day," a hymn by Charles Albert Tindley, while the modern version of the song was first said to have been sung by tobacco workers led by Lucille Simmons during the 1945–1946 Charleston Cigar Factory strike in Charleston, South Carolina.
Old-time music is a genre of North American folk music. It developed along with various North American folk dances, such as square dancing, contra dance, clogging, and buck dancing. It is played on acoustic instruments, generally centering on a combination of fiddle and plucked string instruments, most often the banjo, guitar, and mandolin. Together, they form an ensemble called the string band, which along with the simple banjo-fiddle duet have historically been the most common configurations to play old-time music. The genre is considered a precursor to modern country music.
Thomas Zachariah Glazer was an American folk singer and songwriter known primarily as a composer of ballads, including: "Because All Men Are Brothers", recorded by The Weavers and Peter, Paul and Mary, "Talking Inflation Blues", recorded by Bob Dylan, "The Ballad of FDR" and "A Dollar Ain't A Dollar Anymore". He wrote the lyrics to the songs "Melody of Love" (1954), and "Skokian" (1954).
Cecil James Sharp was an English collector of folk songs, folk dances and instrumental music, as well as a lecturer, teacher, composer and musician. He was a key figure in the folk-song revival in England during the Edwardian period. According to Roud's Folk Song in England, Sharp was the country's "single most important figure in the study of folk song and music".
Jean Ruth Ritchie was an American folk singer, songwriter, and Appalachian dulcimer player, called by some the "Mother of Folk". In her youth she learned hundreds of folk songs in the traditional way, many of which were Appalachian variants of centuries old British and Irish songs, including dozens of Child Ballads. In adulthood, she shared these songs with wide audiences, as well as writing some of her own songs using traditional foundations.
Songcatcher is a 2000 American drama film directed by Maggie Greenwald. It is about a musicologist researching and collecting Appalachian folk music in the mountains of western North Carolina. Although Songcatcher is a fictional film, it is loosely based on the work of Olive Dame Campbell, founder of the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina, and that of the English folk song collector Cecil Sharp, portrayed at the end of the film as professor Cyrus Whittle. The film grossed $3 million in limited theatrical release in the United States, which was generally considered as a respectable result for an arthouse film release in 2001.
Bascom Lamar Lunsford was a folklorist, performer of traditional Appalachian music, and lawyer from western North Carolina. He was often known by the nickname "Minstrel of the Appalachians."
Appalachian music is the music of the region of Appalachia in the Eastern United States. Traditional Appalachian music is derived from various influences, including the ballads, hymns and fiddle music of the British Isles, and to a lesser extent the music of Continental Europe.
(Julie) Loraine Wyman was an American soprano, noted for her concert performances of folk songs, some of which she collected from traditional singers in field work. Paul J. Stamler has called Wyman "the first real practitioner of the urban folk revival."
"Man of Constant Sorrow" is a traditional American folk song first published by Dick Burnett, a partially blind fiddler from Kentucky. It was titled "Farewell Song" in a songbook by Burnett dated to around 1913. A version recorded by Emry Arthur in 1928 gave the song its current titles.
"Michael, Row the Boat Ashore" is a traditional spiritual first noted during the American Civil War at St. Helena Island, one of the Sea Islands of South Carolina. The best-known recording was released in 1960 by the U.S. folk band The Highwaymen; that version briefly reached number-one hit status as a single.
"Darlin' Cory" is a well-known American folk song about love, loss, and moonshine. It is similar in theme to "Little Maggie" and "The Gambling Man" but is not considered the same as those songs.
"Jack Monroe", also known as "Jack Munro", "Jack-A-Roe", "Jackaro", "Jacky Robinson", "Jackie Frazier" and "Jack the Sailor", is a traditional ballad which describes the journey of a woman who disguises herself as the eponymous character to board a sailing ship and save her lover, a soldier.
"Black Is the Color (of My True Love's Hair)" (Roud 3103) is a traditional ballad folk song known in the US as associated with colonial and later music in the Appalachian Mountains. It is believed to have originated in Scotland, as it refers to the River Clyde in the lyrics. American musicologist Alan Lomax supported the thesis of Scottish origin, saying that the song was an American "re-make of British materials."
Maud Karpeles OBE, was a British collector of folksongs and dance teacher.
The Wallin Family is an American family of traditional ballad singers from Madison County, North Carolina. Their repertoire of Appalachian folk ballads— many of which were rooted in "Old World" ballads traceable to the British Isles — brought them to the attention of folk music enthusiasts during the American folk music revival of the 1960s. Wallin family members have recorded numerous times over a period of nearly four decades, and have appeared in several independent documentaries.
"Cumberland Gap" is an Appalachian folk song that likely dates to the latter half of the 19th century and was first recorded in 1924. The song is typically played on banjo or fiddle, and well-known versions of the song include instrumental versions as well as versions with lyrics. A version of the song appeared in the 1934 book, American Ballads and Folk Songs, by folk song collector John Lomax. Woody Guthrie recorded a version of the song at his Folkways sessions in the mid-1940s, and the song saw a resurgence in popularity with the rise of bluegrass and the American folk music revival in the 1950s. In 1957, the British musician Lonnie Donegan had a No. 1 UK hit with a skiffle version of "Cumberland Gap".
Mary Bullman Sands was an American singer of old traditional ballads during the early part of the 20th century. She was known locally as "Singing Mary" due to her singing talent and extensive knowledge of the words and melodies of many old-time traditional songs that had been passed down through previous generations. In 1916, English folklorist Cecil Sharp visited Madison County to collect and record traditional folk songs being sung in America that would have originated generations earlier in the British Isles. Sands sang 25 songs for him, 23 of which he included in his book, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians.
"Pittsburgh Town", sometimes titled as "Pittsburgh" or "Pittsburgh is a Great Old Town", is a folk song written by Woody Guthrie and originally recorded by Pete Seeger. The song was written during a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania stop on an Almanac Singers' tour; both Seeger and Guthrie were members of the band at this time. The song speaks of the labor and environmental problems that the city was facing in 1941, when the song was written. In the time since, environmental legislation has reduced the pollution problem that plagued Pittsburgh; because of this, the song's mentions of pollution in Pittsburgh have been sometimes been replaced with verses extolling the city.
