Summertime

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Summertime is the title of the most famous aria from the opera Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin (music), Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward (libretto), which premiered in 1935. Summertime was marketed as an independent song from this opera and developed into the most covered jazz and pop standard of all time.

History of origin

The Volksoper, written by George Gershwin from 1934, is located in the black harbor area. It is based on the 1924 novel Porgy by DuBose Heyward, which George Gershwin first read in 1926. The stage version of the novel first came to the public in October 1927. The lullaby Summertime was the first song for the opera that Gershwin had completed in February 1934. Gershwin got the idea for the melody in 1926 when he was hearing the Ukrainian lullaby Oi Khodyt Son Kolo Vikon (Ой ходить сон, коло вікон; A dream passes by the window) by Oleksander Koshetz's Ukrainian National Choir. Gershwin then spent the next 20 months completing and orchestrating Porgy & Bess . He even traveled to the scene with his brother Ira in the summer of 1934 to gain direct impressions. After almost 700 pages of music, the opera was completed in August 1935.

The lullaby appears in all three acts of this opera by George Gershwin, always just before a death occurs. It was part of a folk opera and not a musical, as Gershwin emphasized. Summertime can be heard 4 times in total , first as a lullaby (act I, scene I), then during the craps game (act I, scene II as a counterpoint to the choir), in scene IV of act 2 as a recapitulation and in the opening act III. In Summertime , the singer is happy about the easy life during the summer, when she sees the fish jumping by the river and the cotton is ripe. The music, however, signals a sad mood with a fourth below the keynote. It is a 16-bar song in A minor with short passages in C major , whose CDEGA pentatonic scale is used extensively. The jazz standard emerged from the song in the third act, sung in a light soprano voice by the heroine Bess as she holds the orphan of Clara and the fisherman Jake in her arms. The setting is Catfish Row in 1912, an alley in the black milieu of the fishing village of Charleston (South Carolina) ; Charleston was the birthplace of Heyward.

Original recording

At the premiere on September 30, 1935 in the Colonial Theater in Boston, soprano Abbie Mitchell sang, cheered by the audience. Mitchell had also taken on the role of Clara during the premiere at New York's Alvin Theater on October 10, 1935. In New York, on the other hand, the reception was rather reserved, and after 124 performances, Porgy & Bess came to an end on January 25, 1936. It was not until January 22, 1942, that the Volksoper also achieved success in New York in the Majestic Theater with 286 performances - when its creators Gershwin and Heyward had long since passed away.

The first commercially exploited record recording was made on October 23, 1935, sung by the opera soprano Helen Jepson (Victor # 11881). The LP emphasizes that Jepson's recording was personally overseen by George Gershwin. The LP Porgy & Bess Original Cast from May 1940 includes the version sung by Anne Brown (Brown played Bess on stage).

Movie version

In 1957, film producer Samuel "Sam" Goldwyn acquired the rights to Porgy & Bess , the film version of which was released in cinemas in the USA on June 24, 1959 after many problems (fundus was largely destroyed by fire). In the film, Summertime is sung by Diahann Carroll (real voice of the soprano Loulie Jean Norman ) with a female choir. Shortly after its premiere, the film was withdrawn from theaters over a legal battle between the Goldwyn and Gershwin heirs. It was Goldwyn's last cinema production.

Cover versions

Summertime

Billie Holiday - Summertime
Bob Crosby - Summertime

Unsurpassed in the history of music is the number of cover versions following the original and the stage performance. From the large selection, only the musically important versions can be mentioned at this point. Only a few of these made it into the charts . Billie Holiday recorded Summertime on July 10, 1936, and after it was released in August 1936, it achieved the first hit parade listing of the song with rank 12. She is accompanied by Bunny Berigan (trumpet), Artie Shaw (clarinet), Joe Bushkin (piano), Dick McDonough (guitar), Pete Peterson (bass) and Cozy Cole (drums). With her jazzy voice, Holiday throws almost the entire original melody overboard. Paul Robeson follows on January 14, 1938; Bob Crosby and his orchestra are in the recording studio on October 21, 1938 .

Soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet recorded the song on June 8, 1939 with guitarist Teddy Bunn , bassist John Williams, Meade Lux Lewis (piano) and drummer "Big Sid" Catlett . His version is one of the great recordings in jazz history. Eddy Duchin follows in April 1941 (LP Duchin-Gershwin ), the Ravens on September 11, 1947. Sarah Lois Vaughan, the "Devine Sarah in Jazz", had recorded the track on December 21, 1949; Alto saxophonist Charlie Parker followed on November 30, 1949.

Perry Como published one of the first pop versions in March 1952, in jazz it was followed by Ella Fitzgerald in a duet with Louis Armstrong with the recording on August 18, 1957, Sam Cooke considered the classic as the B-side of You Send Me in September 1957, Gene Vincent recorded a rock version on March 28, 1958, Miles Davis followed with a large cast on August 18, 1958. The Beatles first took the title on October 15, 1960 with Ringo Starr (drums) for Polydor Records in acoustics Recording Studio, Kirchenallee 57, Hamburg, on; About six copies of this were pressed, not a single one of which has survived. A few days later, on October 24, 1960, another jazz version was created, this time by John Coltrane . Adam Faith followed on November 19, 1960, the Marcels came in April 1961 with their version only in the lower ranks of the charts.

Billy Stewart - Summertime

With his radical scat version , created on October 6, 1965 for the album Billy Stewart Teaches Old Standards New Tricks , Billy Stewart delivered by far the most unusual version of the song, rewarded with the best placement in pop (rank 10) and rank 7 (rhythm - and blues hit parade) and thus the only crossover hit for Summertime . He was accompanied by the then session band at Chess Records , consisting of Pete Cosey (guitar), Louis Satterfield (electric bass), Sonny Thompson (piano) and drummer Maurice White (later known with Earth, Wind and Fire ). Sonny & Cher recorded the title on January 21, 1966, the release in April 1966 brought no commercial success, not even for the piece recorded on July 4, 1966 by Herbie Mann Septet. Booker T. & the MG's prove their instrumental skills with their version, released on the album And Now! November 1966. Big Brother and the Holding Company brought out a gruff blues version with Janis Joplin in August 1968 ; Love Sculpture , known for its idiosyncratic instrumental interpretation of classical music, took up the evergreen in November 1968. A version by Bill Hemmans sold millions of copies in the United States in 1970.

Doin 'time

In 1996, the American rock band Sublime released a cover version called Doin 'Time . The title includes a sample from the live version to Summertime of the US jazz - and fusion - flutist Herbie Mann . It's a bossa nova from his album Herbie Mann at the Village Gate . The band's original recording included the line “Doin 'time and the livin's easy”. In order to get the release for publication, the band had to agree to use the expression "Summertime" instead of "Doin 'Time" in the text line. The first recording was made with the singer Bradley Nowell , even before a new recording with the modified text could be recorded, he died of a heroin overdose . The band made the new recording with their musician friend Michael Happoldt. The song first appeared on the third studio album Sublime in July 1996. In the same year the song was released as a single in Europe and the United States. In the US, the single made it into the Billboard Hot 100 for seven weeks and reached its highest chart listing at position 87. In her home country it was the only single chart success of her career.

On May 17, 2019, the American pop singer Lana Del Rey released a cover version of Doin 'Time as the fourth single from her album Norman Fucking Rockwell . On the day of its release, a documentary about Sublime also premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival . The single reached number 74 on the Swiss charts and became Del Rey's 17th chart success as a performer in Switzerland. In the UK, the cover hit number 75 and became Del Rey's 22nd chart hit in the UK. In the United States, Doin 'Time only reached the Billboard Hot 100 with the release of the album , reaching its highest chart listing at position 59. It became her 13th single hit in her homeland.

statistics

The multitude of cover versions is unmanageable. In the cover versions, the originally very high soprano range was often abandoned and transposed into more comfortable pitches , so that the standard can be singed by a larger circle of performers. Between 1955 and 1992 alone, 59 versions of Summertime were released on LPs that made it into the LP charts. Coverinfo lists a total of 800 versions of Summertime , but these are only the versions of various artists recorded on audio media. An international society of collectors of recordings of the song, called The Summertime Connection , collects and inventories cover versions of the song. As of 31st 2020 it has around 71,000 complete recordings of Summertime . Most of them are not commercial recordings. In 2003 Wolfgang Lamprecht released two compilation albums ( Summertime: This Was Then and Summertime: This Is Now ) exclusively with Summertime cover versions and remixes (by Klaus Waldeck , Erdem Tunakan and Tristan, among others ) for Universal Music Austria.

Even if Summertime in its many versions neither reached a first hit parade nor became a million seller , today it is one of the evergreens across all styles with translations in 30 languages ​​and is the most interpreted song of all time.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Summertime (1935) - Abbie Mitchell. cover.info, accessed May 31, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Dietrich Schulz-Köhn , The Evergreen Story: 40 x Jazz Quadriga, Weinheim, Berlin 1990, pp. 289f.
  3. ^ Kai Sichtermann, Kultsongs & Evergreens , 2010, p. 125.
  4. ↑ a b c Summertime on Jazzstandards.com
  5. ↑ The first sound carrier recording is a test recording by Abbie Mitchell from July 19, 1935, published in 1974, with George Gershwin playing and conducting piano (LP: Gershwin Conducts Excerpts From Porgy & Bess , 1974; Mark 56 Records # 667). The very late date of release means that it cannot be classified as an early commercially exploited record recording.
  6. ↑ Norbert Carnovale, George Gershwin: A Bio-Bibliografy , 2000, p 206 f.
  7. ↑ The white vocalist Jerry Kruger followed the low-vibrato style Billie Holidays in her interpretation (in an arrangement by Benny Carter ) in 1939.
  8. ↑ Recording: Summertime. In: The Beatles Bible . Retrieved July 13, 2018 .
  9. ↑ New Release: A Compilation of Bill Hemmans "World's Greatest Saxophonist" Biggest Hits "The Legend"
  10. ^ Sublime - Stories, Tales, Lies and Exaggerations , 1998, DVD
  11. ^ Sublime (2) - Sublime. discogs.com, accessed May 31, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Sublime (2) - Doin 'Time. discogs.com, accessed May 31, 2019 .
  13. ↑ Search results. billboard.com, accessed May 31, 2019 .
  14. ^ Lana Del Rey - Doin 'Time. discogs.com, accessed May 31, 2019 .
  15. ↑ Lana Del Rey: Lana Del Rey on Instagram. instagram.com, May 15, 2019, accessed May 31, 2019 .
  16. ^ Lana Del Rey - Doin 'Time. hitparade.ch, accessed on May 31, 2019 .
  17. ↑ Official Singles Chart results matching: Doin 'Time. officialcharts.com, accessed May 31, 2019 .
  18. ↑ Lana Del Rey Doin 'Time Chart History. billboard.com, accessed September 12, 2019 .
  19. ^ Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Albums 1955-1992, 1993, p. 416
  20. ^ Summertime (1935) Abbie Mitchell. In: Cover Info. Retrieved June 13, 2020 .
  21. ↑ cf. The Summertime Connection .
  22. ^ Kai Sichtermann, Kultsongs & Evergreens , 2010, p. 129.
  23. ↑ Dietrich Schulz-Köhn, The Evergreen Story: 40 x Jazz Quadriga, Weinheim, Berlin 1990, p. 294.