Sitting on Top of the World

The song is built from rhyming couplets, each followed by the same two-line chorus. Its singer has been left: his sweetheart went away one spring day, and when she later calls asking him to come back, he answers that he isn’t worried, that he is sitting on top of the world. That shape left plenty of room for new verses, and later singers changed and added to the words freely.

The song also travelled into white string-band music. After Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies recorded it for Bluebird, it became part of the repertoire of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys and, later, of Bill Monroe. Monroe recorded it as “I’m Sittin’ on Top of the World” in Nashville on 14 May 1957, singing lead over three fiddlers: Tommy Jackson, Gordon Terry and Dale Potter. Howlin’ Wolf turned it into a Chicago blues, issued as a Chess single in 1957. Doc Watson recorded it in 1964 for his album Doc Watson, and Cream slowed it right down on Wheels of Fire in 1968.

The Sheiks’ original was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008, and in 2018 the Library of Congress chose it for the National Recording Registry.