#136 - Gone, Gone, Gone, But I Don't Worry
What does it mean to be "Sitting On Top Of the World"? Pleasure? Boast? Resignation? Regret? Pain masked as pride? Or just pain itself?
The world spins round, after all, and if you're sitting on top now, soon you'll be hanging from the bottom, or careening off the side.
Bruce Nemerov follows the song "Sitting On Top Of the World" as it circulates far and wide -- from commercial slogan to Al Jolson Broadway revue to Mississippi Sheiks and Howlin' Wolf blues to Bill Monroe bluegrass to Cream psychedelic plod and Grateful Dead psychedelic romp -- in the radio essay "Blues Song Is a Decades-Long Music Lesson."
2 January 2007