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Spinning Wheel (PDF)
Spinning Wheel (WORD)
YOU CAN PLAY ALONG IN THE SAME KEY, but I've significantly shortened the song and simplified it for group play!
"Spinning Wheel", released as a single in 1969, peaked at number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in July that year, remaining in the runner-up position for three weeks. "Spinning Wheel" was kept out of the number-1 position by both "The Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet" by Henry Mancini and "In the Year 2525" by Zager and Evans. In August that year, the song topped the Billboard Easy Listening chart for two weeks. "Spinning Wheel" was nominated for three Grammy Awards at the 1970 ceremony, winning in the category Best Instrumental Arrangement. The arranger for the song was the band's saxophonist, Fred Lipsius. It was nominated for Record of the Year and Song of the Year; the album won the Grammy for Album of the Year.
Clayton-Thomas was quoted as describing the song as being "written in an age when psychedelic imagery was all over lyrics ...it was my way of saying, 'Don't get too caught up, because everything comes full circle.'" In Clayton-Thomas's 2010 autobiography Blood, Sweat and Tears, he wrote that the Joni Mitchell song "The Circle Game" inspired some of the lyrics. They lived across the hall from one another in Yorkville, the bohemian rock music epicenter of Toronto similar to Greenwich Village in Manhattan at the same time. He claimed a long-unrequited crush on her. "In later years, our common love for jazz brought us closer together.… I was so completely smitten by her that I borrowed a phrase from her song 'The Circle Game', the line about 'painted ponies', and used it in my song 'Spinning Wheel'. In 2007 both songs were inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame and I confessed my plagiarism to her. She said she had never even noticed". Blood, Sweat & Tears (also known as "BS&T") is an American jazz rock music group (with Canadian lead singer David Clayton-Thomas singing lead on all their top-40 U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles) founded in New York City in 1967, noted for combining a brass section with rock band instrumentation.
Born in Kingston Upon Thames, England, David Clayton-Thomas relocated to Toronto with his family as a child. He later moved to New York City, where he joined Blood, Sweat & Tears in 1968. He died June 24, 2026, at a hospital in Toronto at the age of 84.