Cream - Sitting On Top Of The World (1968)

An early rock album love. Wheels Of Fire is the only original studio album by Cream I have ever bought to this day ... on both vinyl and CD. I also have the live album, Royal Albert Hall, on CD. Other songs I have by them from other studio albums all appear on compilation albums, again on vinyl and CD. Before buying Wheels Of Fire, I had to rely on radio to know much about WOF. AM radio provided "White Room" (with one missing verse) which I recorded on reel-to-reel tape. "Crossroads" I originally bought as a 45 RPM single with "Passing The Time" on the B side, a song also appearing on Wheels Of Fire. I did a lot of research on "Crossroads" creator, Robert Johnson, and did a video of it back in 2019. I eventually got most of Johnson's original recordings, some which I have featured in videos. Two more tracks from Wheels Of Fire, "Politician" and "Born Under A Bad Sign" were on Cream's first and second compilation albums, The Best Of Cream, which I bought the same year as the single, in 1969, and The Very Best Of Cream which I bought in the early 1980's. Both also appear on the CD compilation of The Very Best Of Cream. At that time I lacked "As You Said" (which I always thought was Donovan for some reason when it did play on FM radio, which was not often), "Pressed Rat and Warthog," "Those Were The Days," "Deserted Cities Of The Heart," and, until late summer 1970, this lovely gem, "Sitting On Top Of The World" (which was a prized FM radio broadcast to cassette recording for a time until I finally bought the album). Well, back in those days, double albums cost a lot of money, that's why. "Sitting On Top Of The World," another prized possession recorded to cassette tape from FM radio (for as long as the tape lasted). I would rank high on any blues rock hit list, right up there with "Ball and Chain" by Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Since I've Been Loving You" by Led Zeppelin, "Yer Blues" by The Beatles, and "I Put A Spell On You" by CCR. I have wanted to make "Sitting .." a video for a very long time, but sometimes it takes "time" for ideas to click together. Of course there are some songs that are simply too general for dramatization by film or some other motion media. Most do wop falls into this category, you see one do wop love song or breakup song turned into a video and you have practically seen them all. You listen to a year's worth and you have heard them all, as Frank Zappa used to complain about when he was with The Mothers Of Invention (thus, the satirical Reuben and the Jets album). Blues, of course, is a little different because some of it comes from a dark, sad or lonely place ... and like most artists know, that dark, sad or lonely place is where most great art finds its genesis. Oh, by the way, the word in the lyrics IS "graveyard" not "freight yard." But it is "freight train." Guess the tracks must have run by a graveyard. To my surprise, "Sitting On Top Of The World" is a VERY OLD song, before black blues recordings were in large supply on 78 RPM platters. There were several songs with that title, but the version that would go on to fame was written by Walter Vinson and Lonnie Chatmon and recorded by The Mississippi Sheiks in February 1930. Back then they called it "Country Blues." This is Cream's unforgettable cover of the song. Some people ask why I don't supply film source information on all my videos. I do that for the same reason you don't give away the surprise ending to a film you saw. Some films are so well known that just being aware they are on the video may turn some viewers away, simply because they know all the ins and out and convolutions of the movie. If you know a source well enough, you can almost second guess how the video is going to play out. Of course, when you are dealing with Mike Munrow's Retro that couldn't be further from the truth, usually anyway.

Added 14 Jun 2026