Summertime – The Popular Jazz Standard as Performed by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong
Summertime – The Popular Jazz Standard as Performed by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong
Summer is finally here and the sunshine is coming down in full swing! Although I am the kind of person to enjoy all types of weather, something’s different about warm, sunny weather that makes you want to take off your shoes and feel the grass under your feet.
Aside from theatre and musicals we all enjoy during the summer, dancing to the sound of ‘Summertime’ by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong is always part of my plans for summer.
Think of it as my way to celebrate the arrival of summer! This song, like many of Ella Fitzgerald’s songs, is special to me. One of the reasons is that it is a well-recorded jazz standard, so it would be criminal to not love such a classic. The other reason is the soulful lyrics, which I’ll elaborate on in this post.
Composition and Lyrics
The song was composed by George Gershwin for Porgy and Bess, an opera that screened in 1935, and the lyrics were written by DuBose Heyward, the author of the book that the opera was based on. Mr. Heyward wrote a great novel and his ability to write incredible lyrics deserves equal, if not even more, acclaim.
The recording by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong is one of the more popular versions, mainly because jazz was a popular genre at the time and both artists were icons. Even now, however, the song is remastered into different versions, with more artists and musicians taking cues from Fitzgerald and Armstrong’s performance.
This version allowed jazz fans to hear Ella’s captivating voice in conjunction with Louis Armstrong’s award-winning musical talent.
Meaningful Lyricism
When it comes to the song itself, it has all the things you would predict in a song about summer, but much more, as well. Ella sings about the simpler things you can always expect to see when the sun starts shining a little brighter and the afternoons start getting warmer, like when cotton is ready for harvest and the fish swim and jump in the warm water.
At the surface, these are all little things, but when I hear it as a song, it delivers a different experience altogether. On a deeper level, she sings about a time when we all grow up and feel ready to explore the world around us because we are no longer scared. We’re curious as to what lies ahead!
In addition, although exploring can bring an element of danger and the unexpected, she reminds us with her soft, mellow voice, that the unknown is still far away when she sings: “But till that morning, there ain't nothin' can harm you”.
Like all the best jazz songs, “Summertime” is like a key that unlocks all of my most complex emotions. It can be difficult to decipher them, but the melody makes it a soothing process at the same time. It is this thoughtfulness that I enjoy when listening to jazz music.
Now that summer is finally here, I have all the more reason to listen to it. For me, signing and listening to a song about the season helps me relish every aspect of it, whether it is the sunshine, the breeze, or the sight of blooming flowers at a park.
Listen to my album, "Yesterday Once More," while you're lounging in the summer sun: http://bit.ly/maggysimonsings
With Love, Maggy
Barbara Mandrell Retired From Music at 18 — One Night at the Grand Ole Opry Changed Her Mind
Long before Barbara Mandrell became one of the biggest stars in country music, she had already decided her music career was over.
She was only 18.
That decision sounds almost impossible in hindsight.
Because Barbara Mandrell had been preparing for the stage practically since childhood.
Born in Houston on Christmas Day in 1948, she learned accordion and how to read music before entering first grade. After her family moved to California, she began studying steel guitar at about ten years old while also learning saxophone at school.
Then someone important noticed her.
Country guitarist Joe Maphis saw the young Mandrell performing at a music trade convention in 1960.
He was impressed enough to bring her into his Las Vegas act.
Barbara was still a child, yet she was already sharing a musical world populated by professional country performers.
Before long, she appeared on the Los Angeles television program Town Hall Party and joined a national package tour headlined by Johnny Cash.
By 14, she was performing with her family band at military bases in the United States and Asia. Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
It looked as though music had already chosen her.
Then Barbara walked away.
She had fallen in love with Ken Dudney, the drummer in the Mandrell family band.
Dudney eventually joined the Navy and trained as a pilot.
The couple married in 1967.
Barbara decided that was enough.
At 18, she retired from music.
For someone who had spent much of her childhood performing, it was an extraordinary choice.
But the retirement did not last.
When Dudney was away with the Navy, Barbara visited her family in Tennessee.
One evening, she attended a taping of The Porter Wagoner Show before the Grand Ole Opry.
As Barbara watched the performers, something came back.
She leaned toward her father, Irby Mandrell.
She told him she could do what she was watching onstage.
More importantly, she wanted to do it again.
She asked whether he would manage her.
Her father believed in her.
The decision made that night changed everything. Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
Barbara soon signed with Columbia Records.
In 1969, she entered the Billboard country chart with her version of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.”
More hits followed.
By 1972, she had joined the Grand Ole Opry — the same institution connected to the night that helped convince her to return.
Then the career accelerated.
“Sleeping Single in a Double Bed” reached No. 1.
Her version of “If Loving You Is Wrong (I Don’t Want to Be Right)” also topped the country chart.
But Mandrell was becoming more than a recording artist.
She could sing.
She could dance.
She could play multiple instruments.
And onstage, she could move between traditional country, pop, soul, gospel, and show-business spectacle without losing her identity.
By the beginning of the 1980s, Barbara Mandrell was everywhere.
From 1980 to 1982, she starred with her sisters Louise and Irlene on NBC’s Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters, bringing country music into millions of American homes every week.
And the industry recognized what was happening.
The Country Music Association named Mandrell Entertainer of the Year in 1980.
Then she won again in 1981.
She became the first artist in CMA history to win the award in consecutive years. Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
That same period produced the song that would become inseparable from her name.
“I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool.”
The song looked back at a time when openly loving country music was not always fashionable.
Then country culture exploded into the American mainstream.
George Jones appeared on the recording, and the song became another No. 1 country hit for Mandrell
The title almost seemed to describe Barbara herself.
She had been playing steel guitar as a child long before television superstardom.
She had toured before she was old enough to drive.
She had quit.
She had started again.
And she had reached the top.
Her life would still bring serious challenges.
In 1984, a devastating automobile accident left Mandrell with multiple injuries and required a long recovery.
Yet she returned again, continuing to record, tour, and act before eventually retiring from performing in 1997. Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
In 2009, Barbara Mandrell was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
It was a remarkable ending to a story that could easily have stopped decades earlier.
At 18, Barbara Mandrell thought she was finished with music.
Then she sat in an audience in Nashville and watched other performers doing what she had once done.
Something inside her changed.
She told her father she wanted another chance.
He believed her.
And the young woman who had retired before her career truly began eventually became one of country music’s defining entertainers.
