On Top Of Spaghetti: A Song History

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"On Top of Spaghetti" is a comic song by the folk singer Tom Glazer, who set new words of his own to the melody of "On Top of Old Smokey."[1][2] The Traditional Ballad Index, which catalogs "On Top of Old Smokey" as Roud 414, lists "On Top of Spaghetti" among the songs set to the same tune.[3] Its subject is a runaway meatball whose adventures end with it growing into a tree.[2] Glazer, born in Philadelphia in 1914, made his formal debut as a folk singer at New York's Town Hall in 1943 and went on to make many children's records, including LPs for the Young People's Records label.[2][1]

Seventeenth-century painting of a family and children around a table with plates, a small dog in front

Le Nain family and Le Maître des Jeux, A Family Meal, oil on canvas, c. 1645–55 or later. No spaghetti on the table, shown in fun for the song's dinner.

Glazer recorded the song with the Do-Re-Mi Children's Chorus, and Kapp issued it in 1963 as a single and on an album of the same name; the single climbed to number 14 on the Billboard chart that year.[2] The album was nominated for Best Recording for Children at the sixth Grammy Awards.[4][1] The title had already appeared on record the year before: Billboard's issue of June 23, 1962 lists a single called "On Top of Spaghetti" by Sharon & the Lollipops, though the sources consulted here do not say how its words relate to Glazer's.[5]

Glazer recorded it again for CMS Records, on a 1973 album of activity and game songs, this time in a sixth-grade classroom at his son's elementary school with the pupils joining in; Smithsonian Folkways reissued that performance in 2008.[1] The reissue's notes report that the song has turned up on playgrounds around the world, on Sesame Street and television sitcoms, and in a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, while the Contemporary Musicians entry on Glazer describes it as a children's favorite now passed along by oral tradition.[1][2] Mike Anderson, drawing on decades of teaching kindergarten, sets it in DAD tuning in Songs For Kids, a 59-page Fingers Of Steel book of easy arrangements of songs young children enjoy singing.[6]

Our book that contains the song "On Top Of Spaghetti"

Sources

  1. Smithsonian Folkways: "Tom Glazer Sings Honk-Hiss-Tweet-GGGGGGGGGG and Other Children's Favorites" (liner notes).
  2. Encyclopedia.com (Contemporary Musicians): "Glazer, Tom".
  3. The Traditional Ballad Index: "On Top of Old Smokey".
  4. Recording Academy (GRAMMY.com): "Tom Glazer".
  5. World Radio History: "Billboard, June 23, 1962".
  6. Fingers Of Steel: "Mike Anderson, Songs For Kids".
  7. Image: Le Nain family and Le Maître des Jeux, A Family Meal, oil on canvas, c. 1645–55 or later. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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