Songfacts®:

• According to The 111 Best American Ballads: Folk Song USA, "Old Smoky" is "a lonesome love ditty with its roots in England and its trail winding across all the 48 states." Like all the songs in the Sixth Printing of this book, which was published in 1960, it was collected by the father and son team of John and Alan Lomax. The version published therein was adapted by Lomax and Lomax, and arranged for piano by the husband and wife team of Charles and Ruth Seeger.
• "Old Smoky" is also sometimes spelled "Old Smokey" - both spellings are used in the book - and its title rendered as "On Top Of Old Smokey" or "On Top Of Old Smoky."
• Unlike the even more famous "Go Tell Aunt Nancy," this song has been fairly widely recorded. An arrangement by Pete Seeger (the son of Charles Seeger and his first wife Constance Edson) was recorded by The Weavers in 1951, and reached #2 on the Billboard Chart. The song has also been much parodied, some of the versions being unprintable! >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England, for above 3