A parody of the song, “On Top of Spaghetti” was recorded in 1963 by Tom Glazer. It begins with this verse:
On top of spaghetti
All covered with cheese,
I lost my poor meatball
When somebody sneezed.
This version too seems to have entered modern folklore, and it widely is known to children; one source writes of the original On Top of Old Smoky: “if you can listen to it and not think about spaghetti, sneezing and meatballs, more power to you.”
The second song in the medley, Shantyman’s Life, is an American ballad from the lumbermen of the northern forests. A note on an early broadside printing of this song about the hardships of winter logging work says it was composed by George W. Stace of “La Crosse Valley, Wis[consin]”. Franz Rickaby collected a version from Albert Hannah of Bemidji, Minnesota. Rickaby noted that a “shanty boy” was a more common term than “lumberjack” among old time loggers who worked in the live-in winter camps where the bunkhouse was referred to as the “shanty”.
The first verse of one version:
A shanty man's life is a wearisome one,
Though some say it’s free from care.
It’s the swinging of an axe from morning 'till night
In the forest wild and drear.
The third song in the medley, Sourdough Mountain, is a traditional American folk song. Like many folk songs, there are numerous different lyrics; however, there are certain commonalities. The song’s theme is a lament over the narrator’s true love, from whom he is separated. The title comes from the opening line. Each verse of the song consists of a rhyming couplet interspersed with a nonsense refrain. For example:
Chicken’s a-crowin’ on Sourwood Mountain,
Hey, ho, diddle-um day.
So many pretty girls I can’t count ‘em,
Hey ho, diddle-um day.
“Sourwood Mountain” is most closely associated with the music of Appalachia; however, there are versions native to New England as well.
The final song in the medley, Sweet Betsy from Pike, is an American ballad about the trials of a pioneer woman named Betsy and her husband Ike who migrate from Pike County (theorized to be Pike County, Missouri) to California. This Gold Rush-era song, with lyrics published by John A. Stone in 1858, was collected and published in Carl Sandburg's 1927 American Songbag. It was recorded by Burl Ives in 1941, for his debut album Okeh Presents the Wayfaring Stranger.
The melody derives from a popular English comic song “Villikins and his Dinah”, first published in London in 1853 and which had become a hit in America by 1855. Villikins and his Dinah closely parodies the lyrics of an old street ballad extant in England from the early 19th century, William and Diana; but it is unclear whether it simply borrowed the same melody as the existing ballad it parodies, or used a different tune written especially for theatrical performance.
Members of the Western Writers of America chose Sweet Betsy from Pike as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.
