To mark the official start of summer, WUWM is looking into the origins of the beloved and unmistakable jazz melody “Summertime.”
"Summertime" is from the English-language opera "Porgy and Bess," written in 1934 by Russian-Jewish immigrant George Gershwin for an all-Black cast. It’s set in Charleston, South Carolina, on the fictional Catfish Row, long after the abolition of slavery. The story is a slice-of-life about those who descended from enslaved people.
The song is a lullaby sung to a baby three times during the production. "So it's a powerful song," says Jason McKinney, an opera singer, educator and music director with Milwaukee roots. "I love it," he says.
Here's an example from the Houston Grand Opera:
McKinney is a baritone. He has sung the part of Porgy, the male lead, both abroad and in the United States. "I don't sing [Summertime] very often," he says. "I think because it's set up to be a woman's song, and she sings it beautifully. Gershwin set it beautifully. And it has adapted over the years. Ella Fitzgerald, when she started singing it, it took on a new form."
McKinney says "Summertime" is good to have in your back pocket if you’re a singer. "Well, the song is very approachable to people," he says. "And, thus, sometimes singers don't wanna sing it because it seems too simplistic. But sometimes I feel like the simple songs are the ones that take a lot of care."
'Summertime' covers from WUWM listening session
WUWM held a listening session with keyboardist, band leader and arranger Dave Wake and jazz aficionado and former WUWM reporter Chuck Quirmbach exploring the many different versions of the song. Here are some of the favorites:
"Paul Desmond's tone, you can pick it out of a lineup," says Wake. "It's just so unmistakable."
"Desmond just embodies that West Coast cool," notes Quirmbach.
"[Miles Davis'] tone is so buttery," says Wake. "And one of the most amazing things about this recording in particular is ... those backing horns."
"We are talking about this at about the 100th anniversary of Miles Davis' birth," Quirmbach says. "Something more to celebrate. Besides summertime, it's Miles Davis at 100, if you will."
"Harmonically it's very true to, you know, the original song, but then everything going on with the rhythm section is kind of reinventing it," says Wake.
"I hear the Israeli influence, the Middle Eastern influence, in his performance of that," says Quirmbach. "It really adds something."
"You can hear influences. I mean, you could hear Oscar Peterson, you can hear Erroll Garner, you hear the old, you know, almost in the stride stuff even, but it's just those big chords, the big voicings where he was rolling them out," says Wake.
"It's the sort of song I like to listen to in the very early morning of a soft summer day or the very late evening of a soft summer evening," adds Quirmbach.
"Some of that lovers rock stuff going into slower reggae — very happy music and in a place [Jamaica] that is rife with poverty and economic inequity, [so] having the song that sort of straddles those two worlds," says Wake.
"Continues my life-long education in music," says Quirmbach. "I had never heard of a Jamaican or reggae version of this before and it's beautiful."
