"Rocky Top" is an American country and bluegrass song written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant in 1967 and first recorded by the Osborne Brothers later that same year. The song, which is a city-dweller's lamentation over the loss of a simpler and freer existence in the hills of Tennessee, is one of Tennessee's eight official state songs and has been recorded by dozens of artists from multiple musical genres worldwide since its publication. In U.S. college athletics, "Rocky Top" is associated with the Tennessee Volunteers of the University of Tennessee, whose Pride of the Southland Band has played a marching band version of the song at the school's sporting events since the early 1970s.
The Osborne Brothers' 1967 bluegrass version of the song reached number thirty-three on the U.S. Country charts, and country singer Lynn Anderson's 1970 version peaked at number seventeen. In 2005, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ranked "Rocky Top" number seven on its list of 100 Songs of the South.
Read more about Rocky Top: Background, Notable Covers
Famous quotes containing the words rocky and/or top:
“It is what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.”
—Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979)
“The only gracious way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can’t ignore it, top it; if you can’t top it, laugh at it; if you can’t laugh at it, it’s probably deserved.”
—Russell Lynes (b. 1910)