On Top of Spaghetti

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"On Top of Spaghetti"
Song by Sharon and the Lollipops
Published1962
Composer(s)music from "On Top of Old Smoky"
Lyricist(s)Sharon Ruth, Philip Anders

"On Top of Spaghetti" is a ballad and children's song with the best-known performance by folk singer Tom Glazer with the Do-Re-Mi Children's Chorus in 1963. The song is sung to the tune of "On Top of Old Smoky". It is the tale of a meatball that was lost when "somebody sneezed". The song discusses what happened to the meatball after it fell off of a pile of spaghetti and rolled away, and employs hypallage in referring to the "poor little meatball".

In 1961, to the same tune, Dick Biondi, The 9-Midnight DJ on WLS Chicago (1960–63), had recorded on IRC[1] "The Pizza Song". In 1962[2] Sharon and the Lollipops recorded "On Top of Spaghetti" with a lyric credit to Sharon Ruth.[3] It was released in June 1962 and reviewed by Billboard in its Limited Sales Potential column on June 23 of that year.[4] A version in Swedish was released in 1962 by Snopporna.[5]

The extended version by Tom Glazer with the Do-Re-Mi Children's Chorus was released on Kapp in 1963 with a contradictory lyric credit to Tom Glazer, but there were not any publishing references noted on the release labels.[6] That version reached number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100.[7]

References[]

  1. ^ "On Top of a Pizza". 45cat.com. 1961. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
  2. ^ "On Top of Spaghetti". 45cat.com. 1962. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
  3. ^ 1:36 version on Versatile 112, published by Luristan Music Inc., registered through ASCAP
  4. ^ "Billboard 23 June 1962 Page 38". Billboard. 1962. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
  5. ^ "Ta Hit Spettekagan". 45cat.com. 1962. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
  6. ^ "On Top of Spaghetti". 45cat.com. 1963. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
  7. ^ "All US Top 40 Singles For 1963 - Top40Weekly.com". Top40weekly.com. Retrieved 22 April 2021.

Further reading[]

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