On Top of Spaghetti


"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.
In 1961, to the same tune, Dick Biondi, The 9-Midnight DJ on WLS Chicago, had recorded on IRC "The Pizza Song". In 1962 Sharon and the Lollipops recorded "On Top of Spaghetti" with a lyric credit to Sharon Ruth. It was released in June 1962 and reviewed by Billboard in its Limited Sales Potential column in June 23 of that year.
A version in Swedish was released in 1962 by Snopporna.
Tom Glazer with the Do-Re-Mi Children's Chorus, extended version was released on Kapp in 1963 with a contradictory lyric credit to Tom Glazer, but no publishing references were noted on the release labels. That version reached #14 on the Billboard Hot 100.