Sitting On Top of the World is a blues song that has fascinated me for years. I originally heard the Cream version, and that led me to Howlin' Wolf. In this lesson, we'll take a look at the structure of the song, sometimes known as the inside. That includes the harmony, rhythm, and melody. The fills, dynamics, and other elements comprise the outside.
The song has been passed down from generation to generation. The first group that made its mark with it was the Mississippi Sheiks, a popular string band from the late 1920s and early 1930s. Their version is similar to Cream’s in significant structural ways. Our aim is to understand what that structure is, so we can apply it to our own versions, which might include a jam session, cover version or just plain old fun and woodshedding. The video below covers the details and more of this article.
Between the Sheiks and Cream, Chester Burnett aka Howlin' Wolf put his stamp on the tune (see link below). Still more or less structurally the same, Wolf’s version includes a jazzy style with string bass and slinky piano fills plus the squawking, visceral electric guitar of Hubert Sumlin. Cream further electrified the song and streamlined some of the harmonies, recording it on Wheels of Fire, and the live, Goodbye Cream. You should listen to all four of the aforementioned versions for this lesson.
So, what’s going on in this tune? The most important features of the song are that it’s a nine bar blues, and how the melody plays an intrinsic role in that pattern. The nine bar structure is based on an eight bar blues, of course. To play the blues, you will need to know how to navigate both the twelve bar and the eight bar forms. The eight bar is less common but withstands variation quite well. “It Hurts Me Too” by Elmore James is a straightforward version and “Key To The Highway” is a common variation. Take a look at the charts below (and the link to a 12-bar article) to see how the Twelve Bar, Eight Bar and SOTOTW (Sheiks and Wolf/Cream/CB) patterns differ.
Why nine bars? Often, you’ll hear interviewers ask songwriters, “Which comes first, the words or music?” Many rockers, myself included, start with the music – a riff or chord pattern. We then might assume that the chord pattern in SOTOTW is what makes it spin. But that’s not the case. The seventh bar, which I sometimes call the "mystery bar," because it's hard to hear, is added to accommodate the melody, and more importantly, the rhythm of the melody. Listen to the song, paying attention to the bars, and you’ll see that the hook line of the song, “Because I’m sitting on top of the world,” falls exactly into the seventh bar. It’s possible to squeeze all the lyrics into an eight bar blues, but it doesn’t sound nearly as good.
The choice of chords for the seventh bar offers interpreters of the song a chance for self-expression. The Sheiks use a descending, two chord pattern, IV – bIII, which translates as Bb7, Ab in the key of F. (In my musical example, the chords are written, A – G in the key of E because of the Capo.) In my version (traditional) as explained in the video and in the chart below, I use IV7 – V7, or C7 to D7 in the key of G. Both Cream and Howlin’ Wolf avoid a defining chord, emphasizing the vocal melody and the bassline.
I didn’t come up with all of this by myself. I consulted an article, “The Common Stock of Schemes in Early Blues and Country Music,” by Nicholas Stoia, a music theorist who teaches at Duke University. The article posits that there are five main chord/melody/lyric "schemes" that form the basis of many classic blues and country songs. SOTOTW gets its own scheme. Six different harmonic patterns are presented for the seventh bar. Most of them include a V chord.
Listen to any version of the song and note the way the melody/words come in short bursts, three pairs, with each fragment starting as a pickup triplet to the downbeat of a measure. Finally, at the end of bar six and through bar seven to the downbeat of bar eight, the hook line comes in and ties it all together into a satisfying whole – a classic song! Then the turnaround kicks in, and we’re ready for another verse.
There is really no way to fake your way through this tune because there’s nothing quite like it that you may have heard. It certainly flows, but you need to know where everything is. Once you get the picture, there should be no need to count. You can also just follow the melody/words, but you need to know them, as well. This is why the song often results in a train wreck when attempted at a blues jam with people that don’t know each other or the song. When the house band plays their set at the beginning, you may sometimes see them do this song. Learn it, and you will be getting closer to being in the house band, yourself. -Christian Botta
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