Chord Req: Sittin' on Top of the World (MS Sheiks)

Subject: Chord Req: Sheik's 'Sittin' on Top of the World'
From: Roger in Baltimore
Date: 28 Dec 03 - 09:49 AM

Looking for the chords to the Mississippi Sheik's "Sittin' on Top of the World".

Roger in Baltimore

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Sheik's 'Sittin' on Top of the World'
From: Fortunato
Date: 28 Dec 03 - 12:39 PM

Roger,

The difference IMHOP between the latter-day bluegrass version and the older blues version is the return to the four chord *.

G(1)                                          
Twas in the spring one sunny day,
            C(4)                                  G(1)
my good gal left me, lord, she went away
                               D(5)   
Now, she's gone, and I don't worry,
          C(4)*
lord, I'm sittin' on top of the world.

Chance

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Sheik's 'Sittin' on Top of the World'
From: Fortunato
Date: 28 Dec 03 - 12:43 PM

Sorry, cliked the wrong button: The chords were a little off, Roger.


G(1)                                          
Twas in the spring one sunny day,
                C(4)                               G(1)
my good gal left me, lord, she went away
                                          D(5)   
Now, she's gone, and I don't worry,
          C(4)*                            G(1)
lord, I'm sittin' on top of the world.

I play the older chords, but flat picking and it confuses the hell out of bluegrass folks, I ought to re-evaluate, i guess but I've got a stubborn traditional sense. cheers,

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Sheik's 'Sittin' on Top of the World'
From: Art Thieme
Date: 28 Dec 03 - 02:12 PM

Shiek, Walter Vinson told me he wrote this and the more he drank the angrier he got about how many had recorded this good song without paying him anything. I know there were other songs with this or similar tunes, but that's what Walter Vinson (without a "C" in the last name) told me when I taped him in '62 in Chicago.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Sheik's 'Sittin' on Top of the World'
From: Barry Finn
Date: 28 Dec 03 - 09:22 PM

H Roger

You mean it's "shitting on top of a squirrel", oh, oh.

Barry

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Sheik's 'Sittin' on Top of the World'
From: Art Thieme
Date: 29 Dec 03 - 10:31 AM

BARRY,

It's great and an honor to know you are reading my stuff so sppreciably. ;-) Wish I could meet you one day.

Art

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Sheik's 'Sittin' on Top of the World'
From: Fortunato
Date: 29 Dec 03 - 11:01 AM

Barry,

Now there's a visual for a Monday morning at the office...

Thanks for re-aligning my reality.

cheers, chance

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Sheik's 'Sittin' on Top of the World'
From: Merritt
Date: 29 Dec 03 - 12:07 PM

Art - Great story re Vinson. The most common reference I've seen to authorship for Sittin on Top of the World is to Walter Jacobs and Bo Carter, two of the original Mississippi Sheiks. It's my understanding that Walter Jacobs is a pseudonym for Walter Vincent, Vinscen, Vinson, etc. Who didn't give him credit or pay him? Did he have a legal lock on his Walter Jacobs identity?

My favorite arrangement of this song (off a tape I got out of the dollar bin at a local discount store; Jacobs and Carter are credited) is by Ray Charles before he "hit the big time." It's got the adult chords vs. the I-IV-V ones above. Not better, just different. I've reconfabulated the song slightly so I could properly abuse in my own style:

(Key of E; really for me in "C" with capo on 4th fret)

C/G7aug5/C/C7
F7+6/Fm7
C/E7/Am/D9
Dm7/G7+7/C/turn on G7

My unindicted music partner plays in straight E to get some contrast. Charles' vocal on this IMO just fits so nice...there's less of the "oke, Baby, you're gone but I'm just fine.." machismo of some covers I've heard. More the complexity of false bravado and deep pain. We played this tune Saturday night at a bar packed with people half our age, i.e., in their twenties, and had many nice comments. This is just a great song. It speaks to people.

- Merritt

"It's all one big note." - Frank Zappa

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Sheik's 'Sittin' on Top of the World'
From: ddw
Date: 29 Dec 03 - 04:42 PM

Art,

Don't doubt Walter Vinson told you that, but you have to look askance at it, don't you? There were a lot of ripoffs going on in the business in those days (and today), but everything that everybody claimed as theirs was only marginally so. The tune of this, for instance, was almost surely not WV's.
The Sheiks recorded SOTOTW in 1930 -- which is not to say definitively when it was written, of course -- but the tune had been recorded by Leroy Carr in "How Long Blues" in 1928 and by Ida Cox/Papa Charlie Jackson in 1925 for the very similar "How Long, Papa, How Long?"

Of course the tune was also used in Robert Johnson's "Come On In My Kitchen" and a number of other songs. I've got one version -- can't remember offhand who does it -- of the tune showing up with gospel words.

cheeers,

david

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Sheik's 'Sittin' on Top of the World'
From: Art Thieme
Date: 30 Dec 03 - 01:16 AM

That's pretty much what
I said (I thought)!? ;-)

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Sittin' on Top of the World (MS Sheiks)
From: GUEST,Shein Die
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 11:09 PM

Fred McDowell wrote "You got to Move" (a church psalm) melody in the 1920s for which he got credit - and copyright- and $$. The Mississippi Sheiks took that melody and put new words to it: Sitting on Top of the World - Robert Johnson was always 'stealing' others songs, changing words etc and calling them 'his' ... Come On In My Kitchen .... there you go! =)
Shein