Taking a Fresh Look at the Centuries-Old Waltz “On Top of Old Smoky” on Guitar

“On Top of Old Smoky” (sometimes spelled Smokey) is a traditional folk song with roots extending back to England, perhaps as far as the 16th century. It’s a mournful, lonesome waltz with a sweet, lilting melody and a lyric full of regret and bitterness. Passed from generation to generation for centuries, “Old Smoky” has been recorded in a wide variety of styles by all sorts of artists—to name just a handful, Libby Holman, Pete Seeger, the Weavers (whose version reached the pop charts in 1951), Connie Francis, and Bruce Springsteen.

The song is customarily played with a simple three-chord progression, containing just the I, IV, and V chords, or C, F, and G, respectively, in the key of G major. That certainly gets the job done, but I like to do some harmonic embellishments. For instance, instead of just sticking with the C chord for the duration of bars 2–5, I add the relative minor chord, Am, in measure 4. I do the same thing with G and Em in bars 6–9. And in measure 10, instead of playing a regular open D chord, I add the third, F#, in the bass, followed by a D7, also with a low note of F#.

In terms of the picking hand, I use a classic waltz pattern: a bass note on beat 1 (either the root or the fifth of the chord), followed by downstroke strums on 2 and 3, sometimes with an upward strum added on the “and” of the beat. Little details like these help bring fresh color and anticipation to this old waltz.