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# It's summertime | 0:00:10 | 0:00:13 | |
# And the livin' is easy... # | 0:00:15 | 0:00:18 | |
This is a journey into a song. | 0:00:18 | 0:00:21 | |
A song that's captured the imagination of the world. | 0:00:22 | 0:00:26 | |
# Your daddy's rich | 0:00:26 | 0:00:28 | |
# And your mamma's good-lookin' | 0:00:31 | 0:00:34 | |
# Won't you hush, pretty baby | 0:00:34 | 0:00:37 | |
# Don't you cry... # | 0:00:37 | 0:00:40 | |
I can play Summertime in Turkey, I can play Summertime in Tokyo, | 0:00:40 | 0:00:44 | |
I can play Summertime in Sao Paulo, I can play it in Kingston, Jamaica. | 0:00:44 | 0:00:48 | |
The audiences all know it. | 0:00:48 | 0:00:50 | |
# Then you'll spread your wings | 0:00:51 | 0:00:54 | |
# And take to the sky... # | 0:00:54 | 0:00:57 | |
Summertime has got its own pair of wings. | 0:00:57 | 0:00:59 | |
I don't know why, but they know Summertime. | 0:00:59 | 0:01:01 | |
Everybody knows Summertime. | 0:01:01 | 0:01:03 | |
Summertime is the most covered song on the planet. | 0:01:06 | 0:01:10 | |
At least 25,000 versions exist. | 0:01:10 | 0:01:14 | |
SLOW BALLAD: # Summertime... # | 0:01:14 | 0:01:18 | |
From jazz to disco... | 0:01:18 | 0:01:19 | |
-DISCO: -# And the livin' is easy... # | 0:01:19 | 0:01:24 | |
-SOUL: -# Fish are jumpin'... # | 0:01:24 | 0:01:27 | |
..from blues rock... | 0:01:27 | 0:01:28 | |
BLUES: # And the livin' is easy... # | 0:01:28 | 0:01:31 | |
..to hip hop. | 0:01:31 | 0:01:34 | |
SLOW BLUES: # It's summertime | 0:01:34 | 0:01:37 | |
# And the livin' is easy... # | 0:01:37 | 0:01:41 | |
It's become the ultimate hymn to summer. | 0:01:41 | 0:01:46 | |
Yet Summertime has taken on other meanings too. | 0:01:48 | 0:01:52 | |
It's been re-invented throughout the 20th century. | 0:01:52 | 0:01:56 | |
As a civil rights prayer... | 0:01:56 | 0:01:57 | |
..a hippie lullaby.... | 0:02:00 | 0:02:02 | |
..an ode to seduction... | 0:02:05 | 0:02:06 | |
..and a modern freedom song. | 0:02:08 | 0:02:11 | |
# You're gonna rise up singing... # | 0:02:11 | 0:02:16 | |
But for the composer, it was none of these things. | 0:02:16 | 0:02:20 | |
George Gershwin wrote Summertime as the opening aria to an opera | 0:02:20 | 0:02:25 | |
and never dreamt of the global impact it would have. | 0:02:25 | 0:02:28 | |
This is the story of how, against all odds, | 0:02:28 | 0:02:32 | |
a forgotten melody conquered the world. | 0:02:32 | 0:02:34 | |
George Gershwin was born in New York in 1898 | 0:02:51 | 0:02:54 | |
to Jewish immigrants from Russia. | 0:02:54 | 0:02:57 | |
At this time, there was a huge migration of Jews from Europe | 0:03:00 | 0:03:04 | |
and black Americans from the South. | 0:03:04 | 0:03:08 | |
There was nothing to suggest that George or his brother Ira - | 0:03:14 | 0:03:17 | |
sons of a shoe factory foreman - were destined for greatness. | 0:03:17 | 0:03:21 | |
This is a kid who grew up in the rough and tumble of Brooklyn. | 0:03:23 | 0:03:26 | |
He was a streetwise troublemaker. | 0:03:26 | 0:03:29 | |
It was Ira who used to bail him out | 0:03:31 | 0:03:34 | |
when he got into trouble with the police or the neighbours. | 0:03:34 | 0:03:37 | |
You couldn't see, in those days, that this intensely-concentrated | 0:03:37 | 0:03:42 | |
musical mind would emerge. | 0:03:42 | 0:03:44 | |
# Rhythm, rhythm, rhythm that pitter pats through my brain... # | 0:03:44 | 0:03:48 | |
Young George Gershwin might have been a troublemaker, | 0:03:48 | 0:03:51 | |
but he had a passion for music, | 0:03:51 | 0:03:53 | |
which blossomed in his teenage years. | 0:03:53 | 0:03:55 | |
# Comes in the morning without any warning | 0:03:55 | 0:03:59 | |
# And hangs around me all day... # | 0:03:59 | 0:04:01 | |
After a short stint playing the piano in a bar, | 0:04:01 | 0:04:03 | |
the teenage Gershwin was offered the job of song-plugger | 0:04:03 | 0:04:06 | |
in the fiercely competitive world of Tin Pan Alley. | 0:04:06 | 0:04:11 | |
By the 1920s, Gershwin was writing hit songs like | 0:04:11 | 0:04:15 | |
Fascinating Rhythm and Oh, Lady Be Good for Broadway musicals. | 0:04:15 | 0:04:20 | |
# Start a-hopping | 0:04:20 | 0:04:21 | |
# Never stopping... # | 0:04:21 | 0:04:24 | |
But for Gershwin, this success was not enough. | 0:04:24 | 0:04:26 | |
He was determined to rise above his humble origins | 0:04:26 | 0:04:29 | |
and prove himself as a serious composer. | 0:04:29 | 0:04:32 | |
MUSIC: "Rhapsody In Blue" by George Gershwin | 0:04:32 | 0:04:37 | |
At the age of 25, Gershwin composed Rhapsody In Blue, | 0:04:47 | 0:04:52 | |
a jazz-influenced classical concerto. | 0:04:52 | 0:04:54 | |
It was a triumph. | 0:04:58 | 0:05:01 | |
But this Brooklyn marvel had his eyes on an even greater prize - | 0:05:01 | 0:05:05 | |
a grand opera. | 0:05:05 | 0:05:08 | |
When he set out to write an operatic work, it became known that | 0:05:08 | 0:05:12 | |
that's what he was doing and there were snorts of derision | 0:05:12 | 0:05:17 | |
from various parts of the serious and classical musical world | 0:05:17 | 0:05:23 | |
and that attitude remained right the way through | 0:05:23 | 0:05:26 | |
to beyond the first night. | 0:05:26 | 0:05:29 | |
# Like the beat, beat, beat of the tom-tom | 0:05:29 | 0:05:33 | |
# When the jungle shadows fall | 0:05:33 | 0:05:35 | |
# Like the tick, tick, tock of the stately clock | 0:05:35 | 0:05:39 | |
# As it stands against the wall... # | 0:05:39 | 0:05:42 | |
Much of Gershwin's life up to the early 1930s was Broadway. | 0:05:42 | 0:05:46 | |
This was the world of Cole Porter's Night And Day and musicals | 0:05:46 | 0:05:51 | |
with frothy storylines, sparkling lyrics and big show-stopping tunes. | 0:05:51 | 0:05:55 | |
# Night and day, you are the one... # | 0:05:55 | 0:06:02 | |
In choosing to write a serious opera, | 0:06:04 | 0:06:07 | |
Gershwin was taking a massive gamble. | 0:06:07 | 0:06:09 | |
He risked damaging his reputation and alienating his audience. | 0:06:09 | 0:06:14 | |
But it was a calculated risk, | 0:06:15 | 0:06:17 | |
because he believed he had discovered just the right story | 0:06:17 | 0:06:21 | |
that would play to his dramatic and musical strengths. | 0:06:21 | 0:06:25 | |
DuBose Heyward had written a novel called Porgy, | 0:06:25 | 0:06:29 | |
not Porgy And Bess, and Gershwin was not a great reader. | 0:06:29 | 0:06:32 | |
His apartment wasn't full of learned books or even novels, | 0:06:32 | 0:06:36 | |
but for some reason, he read it one night | 0:06:36 | 0:06:38 | |
and apparently he stayed up until four in the morning | 0:06:38 | 0:06:41 | |
because it simply captivated him. | 0:06:41 | 0:06:43 | |
This novel, about a crippled black beggar and his attempt to rescue | 0:06:43 | 0:06:47 | |
Bess from her pimp, allowed Gershwin to write a revolutionary new opera | 0:06:47 | 0:06:53 | |
imbued with the African-American music he loved so much. | 0:06:53 | 0:06:56 | |
# I got plenty of nothin' | 0:06:56 | 0:06:59 | |
# And nothing's plenty for me | 0:06:59 | 0:07:03 | |
# I got no car, I got no mule | 0:07:03 | 0:07:06 | |
# I got no misery | 0:07:06 | 0:07:10 | |
# The folks with plenty of plenty... # | 0:07:10 | 0:07:14 | |
Gershwin travelled to Charleston, South Carolina, | 0:07:14 | 0:07:17 | |
where the novel was set, immersing himself in the black culture | 0:07:17 | 0:07:21 | |
of the area, particularly that of Folly Island. | 0:07:21 | 0:07:25 | |
# What for? # | 0:07:25 | 0:07:28 | |
When he went down and lived with those Negroes | 0:07:28 | 0:07:31 | |
and did dancing with them, shouting with them, which he know he did, | 0:07:31 | 0:07:35 | |
it was as though this New Yorker had never lived anywhere else. | 0:07:35 | 0:07:38 | |
So we have to be grateful | 0:07:38 | 0:07:40 | |
that this chromium-plated, Manhattan cocktail party hero | 0:07:40 | 0:07:44 | |
who had round his piano in New York all these flappers | 0:07:44 | 0:07:47 | |
and his latest songs, which he played for hours on end, | 0:07:47 | 0:07:50 | |
this was very different from the man who was living in a shack | 0:07:50 | 0:07:53 | |
down in South Carolina with the sand crabs and singing the songs, | 0:07:53 | 0:07:56 | |
which he was hearing with the local community around there. | 0:07:56 | 0:08:00 | |
In fact, he got so much into this, with such a great degree | 0:08:00 | 0:08:04 | |
of enthusiasm, DuBose Heyward said when he was chanting | 0:08:04 | 0:08:08 | |
with those people, it was as though he was one of those. Heywood said, | 0:08:08 | 0:08:12 | |
"I don't think any other white man in America could have done it." | 0:08:12 | 0:08:15 | |
Back in New York, Gershwin started pulling together | 0:08:18 | 0:08:22 | |
his South Carolina research, shaping it into an opera score. | 0:08:22 | 0:08:26 | |
PIANO PLAYS | 0:08:26 | 0:08:29 | |
In 1934, he completed one of the first compositions | 0:08:29 | 0:08:33 | |
for Porgy And Bess at a friend's Manhattan apartment. | 0:08:33 | 0:08:36 | |
It was a lullaby called Summertime. | 0:08:36 | 0:08:40 | |
Kay Halle was a friend of Gershwin's. | 0:08:44 | 0:08:47 | |
She's generally described as a socialite | 0:08:47 | 0:08:49 | |
and she knew that Gershwin had been working on a couple | 0:08:49 | 0:08:53 | |
of different versions of the lullaby and none of them really worked | 0:08:53 | 0:08:56 | |
and he kept scrapping the lullaby and rewriting it, coming up with new ideas for it. | 0:08:56 | 0:09:00 | |
PIANIST PLAYS SUMMERTIME | 0:09:00 | 0:09:03 | |
'She came home one night, late at night, | 0:09:06 | 0:09:08 | |
'and she heard this music coming from her music room. | 0:09:08 | 0:09:14 | |
'And she said it was so exquisite.' | 0:09:14 | 0:09:17 | |
Now it sounded as though he'd finally cracked it | 0:09:17 | 0:09:20 | |
and he'd got the finished version. | 0:09:20 | 0:09:22 | |
PIANIST PLAYS SUMMERTIME | 0:09:22 | 0:09:25 | |
'And she said she listened and tears were coursing down her cheeks.' | 0:09:27 | 0:09:32 | |
Like they say, it was an "A-ha!" moment. | 0:09:34 | 0:09:38 | |
She said the minute she heard it, she knew what it was going to be. | 0:09:38 | 0:09:42 | |
The two of them, there was this energy going on, | 0:09:42 | 0:09:45 | |
this electric connection where the two of them looked at each other | 0:09:45 | 0:09:48 | |
and realised this was it, this was going to be THE song. | 0:09:48 | 0:09:52 | |
And that everybody was going to love it. | 0:09:52 | 0:09:54 | |
I think the phrase she used was, | 0:09:54 | 0:09:57 | |
"I knew it was going to be beloved by the world." | 0:09:57 | 0:10:00 | |
# Summertime | 0:10:00 | 0:10:05 | |
# And the living is easy... # | 0:10:05 | 0:10:12 | |
Fancy being the first person, apart from Gershwin, | 0:10:12 | 0:10:16 | |
to hear Summertime. | 0:10:16 | 0:10:17 | |
# And the cotton is high... # | 0:10:17 | 0:10:24 | |
# In olden days | 0:10:24 | 0:10:26 | |
# A glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking | 0:10:26 | 0:10:30 | |
# Now, God knows | 0:10:30 | 0:10:33 | |
# Anything goes... # | 0:10:33 | 0:10:35 | |
In October 1935, Broadway's Alvin Theatre had just finished | 0:10:35 | 0:10:41 | |
a hugely successful run of Cole Porter's musical, Anything Goes. | 0:10:41 | 0:10:45 | |
# Anything goes. # | 0:10:45 | 0:10:48 | |
It was here at the Alvin, not in a grand opera house, | 0:10:48 | 0:10:51 | |
that Gershwin now presented his daring new work, Porgy And Bess. | 0:10:51 | 0:10:55 | |
Even more radically, | 0:10:59 | 0:11:01 | |
it was performed by a classically-trained all-black cast. | 0:11:01 | 0:11:05 | |
And on the first night, | 0:11:05 | 0:11:07 | |
as the curtain rose in front of an unsuspecting audience, | 0:11:07 | 0:11:10 | |
the first vocal performance heard | 0:11:10 | 0:11:12 | |
was the opening aria, Summertime. | 0:11:12 | 0:11:15 | |
# One of these mornings | 0:11:16 | 0:11:23 | |
# You're gonna rise up singing | 0:11:23 | 0:11:32 | |
# Then you'll spread your wings | 0:11:32 | 0:11:38 | |
# And you'll take to the sky... # | 0:11:38 | 0:11:49 | |
'It's sung by a young mother to her child. It's a lullaby. | 0:11:49 | 0:11:55 | |
'It's the end of a swelteringly hot day. | 0:11:55 | 0:11:59 | |
'It's early bedtime for this child that must go to sleep | 0:11:59 | 0:12:04 | |
'as the late afternoon is beginning to give way to the evening.' | 0:12:04 | 0:12:08 | |
And the song has something that is wonderfully languid about it. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:14 | |
Something that is languid because there has been sweltering heat. | 0:12:15 | 0:12:19 | |
# S-u-u-u-u-u-u-mmertime... # | 0:12:19 | 0:12:29 | |
There's also something plangent about it. | 0:12:29 | 0:12:32 | |
There's something in the musical line | 0:12:32 | 0:12:36 | |
that touches on melancholy. | 0:12:36 | 0:12:38 | |
Oh, the love of the mother, cradling the child, | 0:12:38 | 0:12:43 | |
and therefore a kind of sadness that the child is going to go to sleep. | 0:12:43 | 0:12:47 | |
And... | 0:12:47 | 0:12:49 | |
a kind of sadness that the child, one day, is going to grow up and... | 0:12:49 | 0:12:54 | |
..leave the coop, is going to fly away | 0:12:55 | 0:12:58 | |
but that's also going to be wonderful. | 0:12:58 | 0:13:01 | |
But despite its apparent simplicity, | 0:13:03 | 0:13:06 | |
Summertime had hidden depths. | 0:13:06 | 0:13:10 | |
We might ask ourselves, why is Summertime actually in a minor key? | 0:13:12 | 0:13:16 | |
HE PLAYS A MINOR CHORD | 0:13:16 | 0:13:17 | |
A very sad-sounding key, a minor key, because, after all, | 0:13:17 | 0:13:21 | |
if you look at the lyric here, there's nothing but good news for the baby here. | 0:13:21 | 0:13:25 | |
The fish are jumping, there's... | 0:13:25 | 0:13:29 | |
The cotton is high, your daddy's rich, | 0:13:29 | 0:13:31 | |
your mum's good-looking. This is not a threatening lyric. | 0:13:31 | 0:13:34 | |
All of this is positive and yet... | 0:13:34 | 0:13:36 | |
HE PLAYS MINOR CHORD | 0:13:36 | 0:13:38 | |
..it's written in this bluesy, minor key. | 0:13:38 | 0:13:41 | |
Since the mid-1920's, George Gershwin's brother, Ira, | 0:13:43 | 0:13:47 | |
had often collaborated with him. | 0:13:47 | 0:13:49 | |
Ira wrote the snappy, urbane lyrics to many classic Gershwin compositions. | 0:13:49 | 0:13:53 | |
including 'S Wonderful. | 0:13:53 | 0:13:55 | |
# 'S wonderful | 0:13:55 | 0:13:57 | |
# 'S marvellous | 0:13:57 | 0:14:01 | |
# That you should care for me | 0:14:01 | 0:14:06 | |
# 'S awful nice | 0:14:06 | 0:14:09 | |
# 'S paradise... # | 0:14:09 | 0:14:10 | |
George and Ira Gershwin, as well as DuBose Heyward, | 0:14:10 | 0:14:14 | |
were all credited with writing Summertime, | 0:14:14 | 0:14:16 | |
but this composition was believed to be much more the work | 0:14:16 | 0:14:19 | |
of just George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. | 0:14:19 | 0:14:22 | |
'If Ira had worked on it, it would have had some of his wit, | 0:14:22 | 0:14:27 | |
'some of his energy, some of his sort of, verbal magic' | 0:14:27 | 0:14:30 | |
which it doesn't. The fact that Summertime works so well is because it doesn't have any of those things. | 0:14:30 | 0:14:35 | |
# And the living is easy... # | 0:14:35 | 0:14:39 | |
'Heyward wrote the lyrics first.' | 0:14:39 | 0:14:41 | |
Ira Gershwin edited it slightly. | 0:14:41 | 0:14:44 | |
He took out a couple of conjunctions and sort of just gave it a more | 0:14:44 | 0:14:48 | |
firm poetic grounding, but Ira said, "DuBose Heyward is a poet, I'm not. And this is poetry." | 0:14:48 | 0:14:53 | |
# ..is high... # | 0:14:53 | 0:14:57 | |
There's a thousand images - millions, probably - | 0:14:57 | 0:15:01 | |
that could have been chosen to start this poem, | 0:15:01 | 0:15:04 | |
to describe Summertime and there's just two - | 0:15:04 | 0:15:07 | |
fish jumping and cotton high. | 0:15:07 | 0:15:11 | |
And how the writer has put these two things together | 0:15:11 | 0:15:16 | |
so that they work in the minds of everybody who reads them, | 0:15:16 | 0:15:20 | |
it's the sign of great lyrics. | 0:15:20 | 0:15:23 | |
# Hush, little baby | 0:15:23 | 0:15:25 | |
# Don't you cry. # | 0:15:25 | 0:15:33 | |
# It ain't necessarily so | 0:15:33 | 0:15:37 | |
# It ain't necessarily so | 0:15:37 | 0:15:42 | |
# The things that you're liable | 0:15:42 | 0:15:44 | |
# To read in the Bible | 0:15:44 | 0:15:46 | |
# It ain't necessarily so... # | 0:15:46 | 0:15:50 | |
In 1935, the original Broadway run of Porgy And Bess, | 0:15:50 | 0:15:54 | |
despite, or because of, its innovations, confused critics at the time, | 0:15:54 | 0:15:58 | |
and it was not the triumph Gershwin had so hoped for. | 0:15:58 | 0:16:02 | |
It ran, Porgy And Bess, initially | 0:16:04 | 0:16:07 | |
for, I think, 128 performances, which is marvellous for an opera. | 0:16:07 | 0:16:10 | |
You'd have to do it at the opera house many seasons | 0:16:10 | 0:16:13 | |
but it was not a big success in terms of a run on Broadway. | 0:16:13 | 0:16:18 | |
And he was very disappointed. | 0:16:18 | 0:16:19 | |
He lost all the money that he'd invested, | 0:16:19 | 0:16:21 | |
including the copying of parts and everything | 0:16:21 | 0:16:24 | |
and it never made money for him in his lifetime. | 0:16:24 | 0:16:26 | |
Just two years after Summertime was first performed on Broadway, | 0:16:36 | 0:16:40 | |
George Gershwin started to experience severe headaches and blackouts. | 0:16:40 | 0:16:44 | |
These were the first signs of a fatal brain tumour | 0:16:46 | 0:16:49 | |
that would soon kill him. | 0:16:49 | 0:16:51 | |
The saddest and most poignant thing, of course, about the Gershwin story | 0:16:56 | 0:17:01 | |
is that he died 11 weeks short of his 39th birthday. | 0:17:01 | 0:17:06 | |
He was among that hapless group of composers, Mozart and Schubert | 0:17:06 | 0:17:10 | |
and Mendelssohn and Bellini, Chopin, | 0:17:10 | 0:17:12 | |
who never got to their 40th birthday, even, at the height of his powers. | 0:17:12 | 0:17:17 | |
George Gershwin died on 11th July, 1937. | 0:17:19 | 0:17:25 | |
He would never know how immortal Summertime would become. | 0:17:25 | 0:17:28 | |
Summertime might have remained an aria in a forgotten opera. | 0:17:45 | 0:17:48 | |
But something happened that set it on the road to global recognition. | 0:17:48 | 0:17:53 | |
It occurred, not in the glittering neon world of Broadway, | 0:17:53 | 0:17:57 | |
but in one of New York's poorest neighbourhoods - Harlem. | 0:17:57 | 0:18:01 | |
Harlem was the heart of New York's black community | 0:18:03 | 0:18:07 | |
and fast becoming the spiritual home of jazz. | 0:18:07 | 0:18:10 | |
At first, many Harlem jazz musicians had been offended by Porgy And Bess. | 0:18:13 | 0:18:17 | |
Duke Ellington declared that this black-inspired opera | 0:18:17 | 0:18:21 | |
written by three white men was "not in the Negro idiom." | 0:18:21 | 0:18:25 | |
'I can understand people being jealous of Gershwin' | 0:18:30 | 0:18:35 | |
because when you're as good as Gershwin was, | 0:18:35 | 0:18:38 | |
jealousy is just an automatic thing. | 0:18:38 | 0:18:41 | |
JAZZ INTERPRETATION OF "SUMMERTIME" | 0:18:41 | 0:18:46 | |
One young singer dared to disagree with Duke Ellington. | 0:18:49 | 0:18:53 | |
She was the child of a broken home called Eleanora Fagan. | 0:18:53 | 0:18:56 | |
But the world would come to know her as Billie Holiday. | 0:18:56 | 0:19:00 | |
# Summertime | 0:19:00 | 0:19:03 | |
# And the living is easy | 0:19:03 | 0:19:07 | |
# Fish are jumping | 0:19:09 | 0:19:12 | |
# And the cotton is high... # | 0:19:12 | 0:19:16 | |
She recognised that this operatic aria, Summertime, | 0:19:16 | 0:19:20 | |
could be transformed into a jazz tune. | 0:19:20 | 0:19:22 | |
Billie's hot, bluesy version hit the charts in 1936 | 0:19:22 | 0:19:27 | |
and was crucial in launching her solo career. | 0:19:27 | 0:19:30 | |
# ..little baby, don't you cry... # | 0:19:30 | 0:19:35 | |
'Billie holiday made the first' | 0:19:35 | 0:19:36 | |
pop...that's to say recorded by someone not in any way | 0:19:36 | 0:19:40 | |
associated with the show, and she makes it swing. | 0:19:40 | 0:19:44 | |
She's got a big drum vamp going on, | 0:19:44 | 0:19:46 | |
and yet it's one of the definitive recordings of it. | 0:19:46 | 0:19:49 | |
So it lends itself to the artist, | 0:19:49 | 0:19:52 | |
and Gershwin, unlike some of his colleagues, | 0:19:52 | 0:19:55 | |
loved the liberties that great jazz and popular musicians would take with his music. | 0:19:55 | 0:20:00 | |
He had no problem with that at all. | 0:20:00 | 0:20:02 | |
# There's nothing can harm you | 0:20:02 | 0:20:05 | |
# With daddy and... # | 0:20:05 | 0:20:08 | |
Billie Holiday recorded Summertime | 0:20:08 | 0:20:10 | |
when America was in the middle of the Great Depression. | 0:20:10 | 0:20:14 | |
25% of the US population was unemployed. | 0:20:14 | 0:20:18 | |
Black Americans suffered terribly, | 0:20:18 | 0:20:21 | |
and Billie Holiday's Summertime captured their anger. | 0:20:21 | 0:20:24 | |
'This line, "Your daddy's rich and your mamma's good-looking" is the ultimate. | 0:20:33 | 0:20:38 | |
'And what's so wonderful about it is saying to this baby,' | 0:20:40 | 0:20:44 | |
in the world where we live in, in the world that I want for you, | 0:20:44 | 0:20:48 | |
this is what I want for you, | 0:20:48 | 0:20:49 | |
'in this era when no-one has any money, no-one has anything.' | 0:20:49 | 0:20:53 | |
# One of these mornings | 0:20:53 | 0:20:57 | |
# You're going to rise up singing | 0:20:57 | 0:21:02 | |
# Then you'll spread your wings | 0:21:03 | 0:21:08 | |
# And you'll take to the sky... # | 0:21:08 | 0:21:12 | |
'I always thought that her version,' | 0:21:12 | 0:21:15 | |
it's faster and it's a little more severe | 0:21:15 | 0:21:17 | |
than we're used to hearing the song in the show itself. | 0:21:17 | 0:21:20 | |
It's a lot less like a lullaby. | 0:21:20 | 0:21:23 | |
'One way to look at it, she's not just singing a baby to sleep, | 0:21:23 | 0:21:27 | |
'but she's encouraging a race of people to wake up.' | 0:21:27 | 0:21:29 | |
'There had been riots in a Harlem, where people were protesting | 0:21:33 | 0:21:37 | |
'against places where they couldn't go. | 0:21:37 | 0:21:40 | |
'And because this was the '30s, because it was the Depression, | 0:21:40 | 0:21:43 | |
'that was all very much in people's consciousness.' | 0:21:43 | 0:21:46 | |
Billie would have sung it that way. | 0:21:46 | 0:21:48 | |
That's how she was, that's how she'd have swung it. | 0:21:48 | 0:21:51 | |
BEBOP JAZZ MUSIC PLAYS | 0:21:51 | 0:21:55 | |
Billie Holiday had brilliantly adapted Summertime into jazz. | 0:22:00 | 0:22:04 | |
But this music was about to be radically updated during World War Two | 0:22:04 | 0:22:09 | |
when a new breed of black musician forged a revolutionary sound. | 0:22:09 | 0:22:13 | |
Bebop. | 0:22:13 | 0:22:14 | |
Charlie Parker was THE icon of this fast, | 0:22:18 | 0:22:21 | |
frenetic style, whose spiky rhythm shocked many jazz lovers. | 0:22:21 | 0:22:25 | |
HE PLAYS BEPOP | 0:22:25 | 0:22:31 | |
But his 1949 recording, Parker With Strings, | 0:22:31 | 0:22:35 | |
was an attempt to make bebop more palatable to a wider audience. | 0:22:35 | 0:22:39 | |
On this album, Parker decided to record a version of Summertime. | 0:22:41 | 0:22:46 | |
CHARLIE PARKER PLAYS "SUMMERTIME" | 0:22:46 | 0:22:49 | |
'People like Charlie Parker,' | 0:23:06 | 0:23:07 | |
they weren't thinking about covering something, | 0:23:07 | 0:23:10 | |
they were playing something because they liked it, | 0:23:10 | 0:23:13 | |
because people asked them to play it all the time. | 0:23:13 | 0:23:16 | |
Because it provided them with a... | 0:23:16 | 0:23:20 | |
a bridge to the audience. | 0:23:20 | 0:23:22 | |
'Parker stays fairly close to the melody, but he plays it' | 0:23:26 | 0:23:30 | |
with an incredible ebullience. | 0:23:30 | 0:23:33 | |
I mean, there's no other recording even now that's quite like Parker's. | 0:23:33 | 0:23:37 | |
'He plays it with a sense of triumph. | 0:23:47 | 0:23:50 | |
'It's not so much a lullaby, but it's a kind of expression | 0:23:50 | 0:23:53 | |
'of liberation, this sense that the song is not so much' | 0:23:53 | 0:23:57 | |
"Go to sleep, darling", | 0:23:57 | 0:23:59 | |
but, "We are marching into the next world here." | 0:23:59 | 0:24:04 | |
With Summertime now given such a significant blessing by the bebop king, Charlie Parker, | 0:24:15 | 0:24:21 | |
other jazz instrumentalists, like Art Pepper, | 0:24:21 | 0:24:25 | |
Chet Baker, | 0:24:25 | 0:24:28 | |
John Coltrane, | 0:24:28 | 0:24:31 | |
and Bill Evans followed his lead. | 0:24:31 | 0:24:35 | |
All helped establish Summertime as a classic jazz standard. | 0:24:35 | 0:24:38 | |
JAZZ INTERPRETATION OF "SUMMERTIME" | 0:24:38 | 0:24:42 | |
'I think, as an instrumentalist, when you approach a piece, | 0:25:33 | 0:25:37 | |
'a classic like this, which has such a strong lyric, | 0:25:37 | 0:25:39 | |
'that has such a strong melody, | 0:25:39 | 0:25:43 | |
'you're able to explore it in other ways.' | 0:25:43 | 0:25:46 | |
Sometimes in ways that the vocalist wouldn't explore. | 0:25:48 | 0:25:51 | |
They wouldn't bend certain melodies | 0:25:51 | 0:25:53 | |
in the way that we would as instrumentalists do. | 0:25:53 | 0:25:55 | |
'As a kind of jazz standard, it is the basis' | 0:26:04 | 0:26:07 | |
for a lot of people doing improvising around it, | 0:26:07 | 0:26:10 | |
and if this was some incredibly complicated melody, | 0:26:10 | 0:26:12 | |
it would leave very little room for that kind of improvisation and embellishment. | 0:26:12 | 0:26:17 | |
'The lyric is in your head all the time. | 0:26:22 | 0:26:25 | |
'And that's actually why I like instrumental versions | 0:26:25 | 0:26:29 | |
'because I know the lyric. There are only a very few lines to this song' | 0:26:29 | 0:26:32 | |
but when you hear an instrumentalist taking that melody | 0:26:32 | 0:26:35 | |
and doing something with it, as Miles does, | 0:26:35 | 0:26:37 | |
playing a wonderful improvisation on it, | 0:26:37 | 0:26:40 | |
then you just...you have that in your consciousness already. | 0:26:40 | 0:26:43 | |
MILES DAVIS' INTERPRETATION OF "SUMMERTIME" | 0:26:43 | 0:26:48 | |
Miles Davis included his interpretation of Summertime | 0:27:00 | 0:27:04 | |
on his 1958 Porgy And Bess album. | 0:27:04 | 0:27:07 | |
'When Miles Davis did Summertime, | 0:27:08 | 0:27:11 | |
'it's the perfect soundtrack' | 0:27:11 | 0:27:13 | |
for a car ride somewhere in the summer. | 0:27:13 | 0:27:16 | |
'Summertime does seem sort of autobiographical for Miles. | 0:27:25 | 0:27:27 | |
'His daddy was rich and his ma was good-looking.' | 0:27:27 | 0:27:30 | |
'But, for the most part, it's an instrumental' | 0:27:30 | 0:27:33 | |
version that explores the music that Gershwin wrote. | 0:27:33 | 0:27:38 | |
'It's the most vocalised playing he had done on recording up to that time | 0:27:44 | 0:27:48 | |
'and very rarely afterwards does he equal it. | 0:27:48 | 0:27:51 | |
'And he said it was some of the hardest playing he ever did | 0:27:51 | 0:27:55 | |
'because he felt he had to convey' | 0:27:55 | 0:27:57 | |
the meaning of Summertime, the lyric of Summertime. | 0:27:57 | 0:28:00 | |
It has a wonderful kind of lightness about it. | 0:28:08 | 0:28:11 | |
It seems to float above the ground, but it's not | 0:28:11 | 0:28:14 | |
a portrait of the South, nor is it a portrait of life in New York. | 0:28:14 | 0:28:18 | |
It's Miles producing something intangible, it's indefinable. | 0:28:18 | 0:28:24 | |
-# I wouldn't have left no gate -Yeah | 0:28:31 | 0:28:33 | |
-# Bobby's hen pickled in a grate -Yeah | 0:28:33 | 0:28:35 | |
# Keep your eyes on the prize | 0:28:35 | 0:28:40 | |
# Hold on, hold on... # | 0:28:40 | 0:28:43 | |
In the mid-1950s, the cry for civil rights intensified | 0:28:43 | 0:28:47 | |
as black Americans embraced a strategy of non-violent direct action. | 0:28:47 | 0:28:53 | |
# Keep your eyes on the prize Hold on, hold on... # | 0:28:53 | 0:28:58 | |
Few would have guessed that Summertime would play a role in this movement. | 0:28:58 | 0:29:01 | |
Gospel music gave the civil rights struggle much of its moral strength | 0:29:01 | 0:29:05 | |
and the Queen Of Gospel, Mahalia Jackson, | 0:29:05 | 0:29:08 | |
recognised Summertime as a hymn to a better life for her people. | 0:29:08 | 0:29:14 | |
# Summertime | 0:29:14 | 0:29:18 | |
# And the living is easy | 0:29:20 | 0:29:27 | |
# Fish are jumping | 0:29:31 | 0:29:36 | |
# And the cotton is high... # | 0:29:39 | 0:29:43 | |
It's about the civil rights' struggle. | 0:29:43 | 0:29:46 | |
Hush, little baby, don't you cry. | 0:29:46 | 0:29:49 | |
It's about, we're going to survive, we're going to win. | 0:29:49 | 0:29:52 | |
We're gonna overcome this | 0:29:52 | 0:29:54 | |
and so this song became an anthem, of a sort. | 0:29:54 | 0:29:58 | |
# Oh, your daddy is rich | 0:29:58 | 0:30:04 | |
# And your ma is good-lookin'... # | 0:30:04 | 0:30:11 | |
But Mahalia Jackson did something extraordinary with Summertime. | 0:30:13 | 0:30:18 | |
She recorded it as medley, pairing it with Motherless Child, | 0:30:18 | 0:30:23 | |
a black spiritual about a baby who has nothing. | 0:30:23 | 0:30:28 | |
# One of these mornings | 0:30:28 | 0:30:30 | |
# You gonna rise up singing... # | 0:30:33 | 0:30:40 | |
She almost never sang anything that wasn't a religious song. | 0:30:40 | 0:30:44 | |
So, when you're her and you choose to sing Summertime | 0:30:48 | 0:30:52 | |
and connect it to... Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, | 0:30:52 | 0:30:56 | |
see, that's a big one there. | 0:30:56 | 0:30:58 | |
See, that's fairly heavy. | 0:30:58 | 0:31:00 | |
Mahalia Jackson was from Chicago. | 0:31:00 | 0:31:04 | |
Her version of Summertime was affected by a tragic murder | 0:31:04 | 0:31:08 | |
that rocked the city's black population in 1955. | 0:31:08 | 0:31:13 | |
At that time, a young southsider, named Emmett Till, | 0:31:13 | 0:31:17 | |
had gone to Mississippi to visit his relatives | 0:31:17 | 0:31:20 | |
and we don't know what happened. | 0:31:20 | 0:31:22 | |
Either he looked at a white woman, | 0:31:22 | 0:31:26 | |
maybe said a wise crack. | 0:31:26 | 0:31:28 | |
Anyway, he wound up in the Pearl River, dead. | 0:31:28 | 0:31:32 | |
# Like a motherless child | 0:31:32 | 0:31:38 | |
# Sometimes I feel | 0:31:42 | 0:31:50 | |
# Like a motherless child... # | 0:31:50 | 0:31:55 | |
Mahalia Jackson recorded her version of Summertime in 1956, | 0:31:56 | 0:32:01 | |
a year after Emmett Till's murder. | 0:32:01 | 0:32:03 | |
# ..like a motherless child... # | 0:32:07 | 0:32:12 | |
So, she's mourning the fact that... | 0:32:14 | 0:32:17 | |
When you hear about Emmett Till, it brings all the terror back. | 0:32:17 | 0:32:21 | |
It brings back the depression. | 0:32:21 | 0:32:24 | |
It brings back the fear. | 0:32:24 | 0:32:25 | |
# But till that morning | 0:32:25 | 0:32:35 | |
# Nothing will harm you... # | 0:32:35 | 0:32:41 | |
Through melding those two songs together, | 0:32:41 | 0:32:44 | |
she says, "White America, you see the fish hop, you see all that. | 0:32:44 | 0:32:51 | |
"And the cotton is high, let me tell you what's inside that cotton field. | 0:32:51 | 0:32:55 | |
"Let me tell you what it looks like in there." | 0:32:55 | 0:32:57 | |
So, Mahalia sees inside that cotton patch. | 0:32:57 | 0:33:02 | |
She sees a corpse, because, that's what would have been in there. | 0:33:02 | 0:33:07 | |
# Well, Summertime | 0:33:13 | 0:33:17 | |
# And the living is easy | 0:33:17 | 0:33:21 | |
# Fish are jumping | 0:33:21 | 0:33:26 | |
# And the cotton is high | 0:33:26 | 0:33:30 | |
# Your daddy's rich | 0:33:31 | 0:33:35 | |
# And your mommy's good-lookin'... # | 0:33:35 | 0:33:37 | |
By the late 1950s, Summertime had been recorded in all styles of black music, | 0:33:37 | 0:33:43 | |
jazz, gospel, rhythm and blues. | 0:33:43 | 0:33:47 | |
# One of these mornings | 0:33:47 | 0:33:50 | |
# You're gonna jump up and sing | 0:33:50 | 0:33:53 | |
# Then you spread your wings | 0:33:53 | 0:33:57 | |
# And you take to the sky | 0:33:57 | 0:34:01 | |
# Until that morning there is nothing... # | 0:34:01 | 0:34:06 | |
It's got to be rare that somebody can write a song | 0:34:06 | 0:34:10 | |
about another race, and then the people from that race | 0:34:10 | 0:34:15 | |
start to own the song | 0:34:15 | 0:34:17 | |
because it is so like who and what they are. | 0:34:17 | 0:34:21 | |
For many, the ultimate version of Summertime was by the first lady of song, Ella Fitzgerald. | 0:34:23 | 0:34:30 | |
# Summertime... # | 0:34:30 | 0:34:33 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:34:33 | 0:34:37 | |
# And the living is easy | 0:34:41 | 0:34:46 | |
# Fish are jumping... # | 0:34:52 | 0:34:56 | |
There is a clarity about the way she sings. | 0:34:58 | 0:35:01 | |
You can read so much into the song. | 0:35:01 | 0:35:03 | |
In its way, it's a perfect... | 0:35:04 | 0:35:07 | |
Her performance is as perfect as it can be. | 0:35:07 | 0:35:10 | |
# Your daddy's rich... # | 0:35:10 | 0:35:16 | |
After George Gershwin's death, | 0:35:16 | 0:35:19 | |
his brother, Ira, had continued writing lyrics for movie scores and Broadway musicals. | 0:35:19 | 0:35:24 | |
He once admitted, "I never knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing them." | 0:35:24 | 0:35:31 | |
You can always tell a great jazz artist if they can take a standard and make it their own. | 0:35:36 | 0:35:42 | |
If you hear Ella perform this, it's as if she wrote it. | 0:35:42 | 0:35:46 | |
She really owned that song. | 0:35:46 | 0:35:48 | |
# One of these mornings | 0:35:48 | 0:35:53 | |
# You're gonna rise up singing... # | 0:35:55 | 0:36:01 | |
Ella's recording was a crossover hit | 0:36:04 | 0:36:06 | |
wowing white as well as black audiences. | 0:36:06 | 0:36:10 | |
George Gershwin was now considered one of the great American composers | 0:36:10 | 0:36:14 | |
and Porgy And Bess was finally experiencing long overdue acclaim. | 0:36:14 | 0:36:20 | |
This started with a Gershwin biopic, Rhapsody In Blue, | 0:36:21 | 0:36:25 | |
which featured a Porgy And Bess sequence. | 0:36:25 | 0:36:28 | |
# Summertime and the living is easy... # | 0:36:28 | 0:36:33 | |
The opera's reputation steadily grew, and in 1959 | 0:36:39 | 0:36:43 | |
was made into a Hollywood blockbuster by Otto Preminger. | 0:36:43 | 0:36:47 | |
But just when Summertime had climbed the dizzy heights | 0:36:50 | 0:36:54 | |
of both the jazz and opera worlds, | 0:36:54 | 0:36:56 | |
its hard-won status was now threatened by a brand-new sound. | 0:36:56 | 0:37:00 | |
# You ain't nothing but a hound dog | 0:37:00 | 0:37:04 | |
# Crying all the time | 0:37:04 | 0:37:06 | |
# You ain't nothing but a hound dog | 0:37:06 | 0:37:09 | |
# Crying all the time | 0:37:09 | 0:37:12 | |
# Well, you never caught a rabbit and you ain't no friend of mine... # | 0:37:12 | 0:37:17 | |
In the mid-1950s, singers like Elvis Presley revolutionised the American musical landscape, | 0:37:17 | 0:37:24 | |
turning white teenagers on to black rhythms. | 0:37:24 | 0:37:28 | |
# Yeah, you ain't never caught a rabbit | 0:37:28 | 0:37:30 | |
# And you ain't no friend of mine... # | 0:37:30 | 0:37:34 | |
Yet, incredibly, Summertime would do what no other jazz standard would do... | 0:37:37 | 0:37:43 | |
It fitted in with rock and roll. | 0:37:43 | 0:37:45 | |
# Summertime | 0:37:45 | 0:37:47 | |
# And the living is easy... # | 0:37:47 | 0:37:50 | |
Summertime was a song that early rock and roll singers could perform, | 0:37:50 | 0:37:56 | |
in their own style, and yet establish a relationship with an earlier generation. | 0:37:56 | 0:38:01 | |
# And your ma is good-lookin' | 0:38:01 | 0:38:04 | |
# So, hush little baby | 0:38:04 | 0:38:08 | |
# Don't you cry... # | 0:38:08 | 0:38:11 | |
Well, Gene Vincent and Ricky Nelson | 0:38:11 | 0:38:14 | |
had a huge effect on British bands in the early '60s. | 0:38:14 | 0:38:18 | |
# You're gonna spread your wings | 0:38:18 | 0:38:21 | |
# And take to the sky... # | 0:38:21 | 0:38:22 | |
Ricky Nelson was a particular favourite of mine. | 0:38:22 | 0:38:26 | |
I really liked his voice. | 0:38:26 | 0:38:28 | |
His version is one where he sticks very close to the melody. | 0:38:28 | 0:38:31 | |
It just works. | 0:38:31 | 0:38:33 | |
# And daddy and mommy They're standing by... # | 0:38:33 | 0:38:37 | |
In 1965, The Zombies, from St Albans, | 0:38:38 | 0:38:42 | |
were one of the very first rock groups to cover Summertime. | 0:38:42 | 0:38:46 | |
I was familiar with the song, but I don't know anything its history. | 0:38:47 | 0:38:51 | |
It was just this arrangement that interested us and interested me. | 0:38:51 | 0:38:56 | |
It was an opportunity to do something that was different | 0:38:56 | 0:38:59 | |
to what many of the bands were playing at the time. | 0:38:59 | 0:39:02 | |
It was something which gave us an opportunity to improvise | 0:39:02 | 0:39:05 | |
and the mood was fantastic. | 0:39:05 | 0:39:07 | |
# It's summertime | 0:39:11 | 0:39:14 | |
# And the living is easy... # | 0:39:14 | 0:39:18 | |
We were playing in clubs and pubs and we got a great reaction. | 0:39:18 | 0:39:24 | |
I think it was quite brave of us to play it in a rock environment. | 0:39:24 | 0:39:29 | |
It's surprised me even that to the present day. | 0:39:29 | 0:39:32 | |
You can still play soft ballads to people if they are good ballads. | 0:39:32 | 0:39:36 | |
# Why don't you hush, pretty baby | 0:39:36 | 0:39:38 | |
# Don't you cry... # | 0:39:38 | 0:39:43 | |
I loved the construction of the song. | 0:39:43 | 0:39:45 | |
Gershwin totally understands what it is to write a song, to produce music. | 0:39:45 | 0:39:51 | |
On the feeling level, on the slightly magical level, | 0:39:51 | 0:39:54 | |
where, if you write a song, you reach out and grab something. | 0:39:54 | 0:39:58 | |
He has reached out and grabbed that. | 0:39:58 | 0:40:00 | |
That is something that people universally tap into. | 0:40:00 | 0:40:04 | |
The British invasion of America in the mid-1960s | 0:40:08 | 0:40:11 | |
was spearheaded by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. | 0:40:11 | 0:40:15 | |
The Zombies were very much a part of this invasion | 0:40:16 | 0:40:19 | |
and helped popularise Summertime with a new generation of American teenagers. | 0:40:19 | 0:40:25 | |
I'd like to think that The Zombies did contribute to the mystique | 0:40:25 | 0:40:29 | |
and the popularity of Summertime. | 0:40:29 | 0:40:32 | |
We always included it in our repertoire when we were playing, | 0:40:32 | 0:40:35 | |
especially in America. | 0:40:35 | 0:40:38 | |
I think a lot of young people in America would have been introduced to that song, | 0:40:38 | 0:40:41 | |
that perhaps wouldn't have heard it in any other way. | 0:40:41 | 0:40:45 | |
# Summertime... # | 0:40:59 | 0:41:03 | |
As the '60s progressed, it became increasingly apparent | 0:41:03 | 0:41:06 | |
that Summertime could be interpreted from some very different perspectives. | 0:41:06 | 0:41:10 | |
# Fish are jumping | 0:41:13 | 0:41:17 | |
# And the cotton is high... # | 0:41:17 | 0:41:22 | |
The Julie London record is clearly a romantic | 0:41:22 | 0:41:24 | |
interpretation of Summertime. | 0:41:24 | 0:41:26 | |
A seductive interpretation, not at all maternal. | 0:41:26 | 0:41:28 | |
This is not a woman trying to get a baby to go to sleep, | 0:41:28 | 0:41:32 | |
She's trying to get somebody to go to bed, but not to sleep. | 0:41:32 | 0:41:35 | |
It's a "come on" song to a lover. | 0:41:41 | 0:41:43 | |
It's sensuous, very laid-back, it's witty. | 0:41:43 | 0:41:47 | |
It's lithe and, in its way, it's just as authentic. | 0:41:47 | 0:41:50 | |
It's still the song. | 0:41:50 | 0:41:52 | |
It's not that she's turned it into something else, | 0:41:52 | 0:41:55 | |
she's just found another place to go with it. | 0:41:55 | 0:41:57 | |
She totally made it because of her looks | 0:41:59 | 0:42:02 | |
and because she looks so glamorous and so hot. | 0:42:02 | 0:42:04 | |
She's on every album cover, posing seductively. | 0:42:04 | 0:42:09 | |
A lot of men and boys bought those covers because of the images. | 0:42:09 | 0:42:13 | |
When you got home and played the records, she really delivers. | 0:42:13 | 0:42:16 | |
She's not a tease. | 0:42:16 | 0:42:18 | |
# ..standing by... # | 0:42:18 | 0:42:24 | |
Now... | 0:42:24 | 0:42:26 | |
Zip me up. | 0:42:26 | 0:42:28 | |
Summertime's roots within a 1930s opera were now so distant | 0:42:35 | 0:42:39 | |
that in the flowering mid-'60s music scene of San Francisco, | 0:42:39 | 0:42:43 | |
it was believed by many to be a traditional folk song. | 0:42:43 | 0:42:47 | |
# Yes, summertime | 0:42:47 | 0:42:49 | |
# And the livin' is so easy... # | 0:42:55 | 0:43:01 | |
I'd wager everyone in Big Brother & The Holding Company | 0:43:01 | 0:43:03 | |
thought of that as a folk song. | 0:43:03 | 0:43:06 | |
There had just been this folk revival shortly before that. | 0:43:06 | 0:43:10 | |
They were used to playing that song in coffee houses. | 0:43:10 | 0:43:13 | |
I doubt that they thought of it as a jazz song or an opera song. | 0:43:13 | 0:43:17 | |
I think they thought of it as a folk song, like House Of The Rising Sun. | 0:43:17 | 0:43:22 | |
# Your daddy's rich... # | 0:43:23 | 0:43:26 | |
In 1966, Janis Joplin joined the San Francisco rock band, | 0:43:29 | 0:43:33 | |
Big Brother & The Holding Company. | 0:43:33 | 0:43:36 | |
They recorded one of the most celebrated versions of Summertime | 0:43:36 | 0:43:41 | |
that included a new introduction by Sam Andrew. | 0:43:41 | 0:43:44 | |
Bach has a prelude that starts up. He has this thing and it goes... | 0:43:53 | 0:43:57 | |
HE SINGS THE TUNE | 0:43:57 | 0:44:01 | |
It's a very typical Bach motif. | 0:44:01 | 0:44:04 | |
So I just slowed that down. | 0:44:04 | 0:44:07 | |
It's exactly that and I slowed it way down | 0:44:07 | 0:44:10 | |
and used that as kind of a motivating force for Summertime. | 0:44:10 | 0:44:15 | |
INTRODUCTION PLAYS | 0:44:15 | 0:44:19 | |
Summertime is such a great song. | 0:44:23 | 0:44:26 | |
It was something Janis loved to sing. | 0:44:26 | 0:44:30 | |
# Summertime, time, time, time | 0:44:30 | 0:44:36 | |
# Time | 0:44:36 | 0:44:39 | |
# For livin' easy... # | 0:44:39 | 0:44:43 | |
She sang the song to herself. I think she was rocking herself. | 0:44:45 | 0:44:49 | |
She was singing a lullaby to herself | 0:44:49 | 0:44:51 | |
but she was also singing it to the universe, to the audience. | 0:44:51 | 0:44:56 | |
She was reassuring them. | 0:44:56 | 0:44:58 | |
This is a song that will calm people because it is a lullaby. | 0:44:58 | 0:45:03 | |
# Your daddy's rich | 0:45:03 | 0:45:09 | |
# And your ma's | 0:45:09 | 0:45:12 | |
# So good looking, babe... # | 0:45:12 | 0:45:15 | |
Janis Joplin's voice has always been a voice that haunts me | 0:45:15 | 0:45:18 | |
every time I listened to it | 0:45:18 | 0:45:20 | |
because there is something in her voice | 0:45:20 | 0:45:23 | |
that makes me feel like she knew she was not going to last long. | 0:45:23 | 0:45:29 | |
And every minute, every second she'd got to give it all. | 0:45:29 | 0:45:33 | |
And she was able to do a version of Summertime | 0:45:33 | 0:45:38 | |
that would keep the lullaby part of it, | 0:45:38 | 0:45:40 | |
keep everything we've said before but with her urgency to it. | 0:45:40 | 0:45:44 | |
# Whoa | 0:45:44 | 0:45:50 | |
# One of these mornings | 0:45:50 | 0:45:53 | |
# Shine, your eyes upset, baby | 0:45:53 | 0:45:59 | |
# I said you're gonna go | 0:46:03 | 0:46:06 | |
# Honey, gonna spread your wings | 0:46:06 | 0:46:09 | |
# Gonna take, take to... # | 0:46:09 | 0:46:12 | |
If you don't enjoy summertime while you are alive, shame on you. | 0:46:12 | 0:46:18 | |
I'm telling you, just embrace life in summer or any other time. | 0:46:18 | 0:46:23 | |
That's what her version makes me feel like. Gives me goosebumps. | 0:46:23 | 0:46:26 | |
She mines a particular quality of the song most people left behind. | 0:46:26 | 0:46:31 | |
Even though I find her performance painful in many respects, | 0:46:31 | 0:46:34 | |
because her voice was so stretched out of shape, | 0:46:34 | 0:46:37 | |
and that's the blues quality. | 0:46:37 | 0:46:39 | |
I mean, she sings it as the blues. | 0:46:39 | 0:46:42 | |
She screeches at the top. Almost, it's Summertime in extremis. | 0:46:42 | 0:46:47 | |
# Your dad's rich | 0:46:47 | 0:46:53 | |
# And your ma's good-looking, baby... # | 0:46:55 | 0:47:02 | |
As well as performing it live, Big Brother & The Holding Company | 0:47:02 | 0:47:06 | |
included Summertime on their number one album, Cheap Thrills. | 0:47:06 | 0:47:10 | |
This was one of the biggest-selling records in America in 1968 | 0:47:10 | 0:47:15 | |
and gave Summertime a massive new audience. | 0:47:15 | 0:47:19 | |
The LP cover was designed by the cartoonist Robert Crumb. | 0:47:19 | 0:47:23 | |
The idea behind his Summertime illustration, | 0:47:23 | 0:47:26 | |
with its image of a black maid with a white baby, | 0:47:26 | 0:47:29 | |
was to satirise white stereotypes of African-Americans, | 0:47:29 | 0:47:33 | |
but it still offended some. | 0:47:33 | 0:47:34 | |
The Black Panthers were really upset about that depiction | 0:47:42 | 0:47:46 | |
and they black-balled the album. | 0:47:46 | 0:47:49 | |
They hated that depiction. | 0:47:49 | 0:47:52 | |
I guess it's like this negro mammy. | 0:47:52 | 0:47:55 | |
She's holding this white baby. | 0:47:55 | 0:47:57 | |
It's upsetting. | 0:47:57 | 0:47:59 | |
In America, the summers of the 1960s | 0:48:06 | 0:48:09 | |
were intimately related to love-ins and flower power, | 0:48:09 | 0:48:12 | |
and Janis Joplin's version of Summertime | 0:48:12 | 0:48:14 | |
fed into that notion of a beautiful, psychedelic summer. | 0:48:14 | 0:48:19 | |
But the summers of the 1960s for many black Americans | 0:48:22 | 0:48:26 | |
were the long, hot summers of rage. | 0:48:26 | 0:48:28 | |
Again, it's a characteristic of the song that, | 0:48:44 | 0:48:49 | |
not only can it withstand those different treatments, | 0:48:49 | 0:48:51 | |
it has been treated in those different ways | 0:48:51 | 0:48:54 | |
with some very dark, negative, | 0:48:54 | 0:48:57 | |
broken versions of Summer. | 0:48:57 | 0:48:59 | |
Albert Ayler's tense, discordant version of Summertime | 0:49:03 | 0:49:07 | |
perfectly encapsulated the black American mood of anger | 0:49:07 | 0:49:11 | |
and disaffection in the 1960s. | 0:49:11 | 0:49:13 | |
Summertime meant to black people, | 0:49:19 | 0:49:21 | |
how many black people are going to be killed by police this year? | 0:49:21 | 0:49:25 | |
How many rednecks are going to murder somebody? | 0:49:25 | 0:49:29 | |
How many churches are going to be bombed? | 0:49:29 | 0:49:32 | |
How many demonstrations are going to be had in which people are going to | 0:49:32 | 0:49:37 | |
act towards their fellow citizens | 0:49:37 | 0:49:41 | |
like wild dogs? | 0:49:41 | 0:49:44 | |
DISCORDANT JAZZ VERSION OF "SUMMERTIME" | 0:49:44 | 0:49:46 | |
Albert Ayler is saying, "Uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh, | 0:49:59 | 0:50:02 | |
"I don't want you to get it. | 0:50:02 | 0:50:05 | |
"I want you to be irritated. | 0:50:05 | 0:50:06 | |
"I want you to be upset because in the upset and irritation, | 0:50:06 | 0:50:09 | |
"you can see what people are saying. | 0:50:09 | 0:50:12 | |
"They're saying no. | 0:50:12 | 0:50:13 | |
"And this, I'm saying no to the beauty of Summertime." | 0:50:13 | 0:50:16 | |
# Summertime | 0:50:24 | 0:50:30 | |
# And the living is easy | 0:50:30 | 0:50:35 | |
# Fish are jumping | 0:50:39 | 0:50:44 | |
# And the cotton is high... # | 0:50:44 | 0:50:50 | |
At the end of the 1960s, Summertime was everywhere in America, | 0:50:51 | 0:50:57 | |
three decades since its birth. | 0:50:57 | 0:51:00 | |
# ..and your ma is... # | 0:51:00 | 0:51:01 | |
It was now set for world domination. | 0:51:01 | 0:51:05 | |
# Summertime | 0:51:05 | 0:51:10 | |
# And the living is easy... # | 0:51:10 | 0:51:15 | |
Starting in the 1950s and '60s, | 0:51:15 | 0:51:17 | |
musicians in the Caribbean picked up on Summertime. | 0:51:17 | 0:51:22 | |
The song travelled to Havana... | 0:51:22 | 0:51:24 | |
# Well, your daddy's rich... # | 0:51:24 | 0:51:26 | |
There's a wonderful version by a Cuban singer called Enrique Herrera. | 0:51:26 | 0:51:29 | |
Just with conga drums. | 0:51:29 | 0:51:32 | |
Just voice and congas, very elemental. | 0:51:32 | 0:51:34 | |
But it's very, very powerful indeed. | 0:51:34 | 0:51:37 | |
Summertime also entered Puerto Rico. | 0:51:37 | 0:51:40 | |
You could feel the heat of the beach and the heat of the Afro-Cuban rhythms of the congas of Africa even. | 0:51:44 | 0:51:49 | |
Latin music in general is a very happy kind of music, very danceable. | 0:51:49 | 0:51:55 | |
This song fits right into that category. | 0:51:55 | 0:51:57 | |
Summertime travelled to Trinidad. | 0:51:59 | 0:52:03 | |
It's really African-based and it's African, even though | 0:52:03 | 0:52:07 | |
it's written by a Jewish man, it's really an African-based song | 0:52:07 | 0:52:12 | |
and Latin rhythms just fell into this naturally. | 0:52:12 | 0:52:14 | |
And on to Jamaica. | 0:52:16 | 0:52:18 | |
REGGAE VERSION OF SUMMERTIME PLAYS | 0:52:18 | 0:52:22 | |
Every culture has their folk music so, if you look at reggae music | 0:52:22 | 0:52:26 | |
which is all about survival, | 0:52:26 | 0:52:28 | |
all about the voice | 0:52:28 | 0:52:30 | |
of the underdog, erm... | 0:52:30 | 0:52:33 | |
a song like Summertime is particularly relevant. | 0:52:33 | 0:52:36 | |
# One of these mornings... | 0:52:36 | 0:52:41 | |
# You're gonna rise up singing... # | 0:52:41 | 0:52:45 | |
In the early '70s BB Seaton cut his reggae version of Summertime in Kingston, Jamaica. | 0:52:45 | 0:52:51 | |
The melody is so relaxed that you could go to sleep singing it. | 0:52:56 | 0:53:01 | |
Putting it on a reggae rhythm, I think that gave it life. | 0:53:01 | 0:53:05 | |
You know, I mean, because when I was singing it I remember the beat, | 0:53:05 | 0:53:08 | |
you know, it was so pulsating, | 0:53:08 | 0:53:10 | |
that I was actually floating on top of the rhythm, | 0:53:10 | 0:53:13 | |
with that melody. | 0:53:13 | 0:53:14 | |
# ..with your daddy | 0:53:14 | 0:53:17 | |
# Sta-a-a-anding by... # | 0:53:17 | 0:53:21 | |
From Jamaica, Summertime breezed on down through the Tropics | 0:53:21 | 0:53:25 | |
to Rio de Janeiro. | 0:53:25 | 0:53:27 | |
For this song to have had quite such an extraordinary ability | 0:53:31 | 0:53:35 | |
to remain with us and to be transformed and to be played | 0:53:35 | 0:53:38 | |
and sung by so many people it has to have these very adaptable qualities. | 0:53:38 | 0:53:43 | |
I think it's the adaptability of it that is perhaps at the root of | 0:53:43 | 0:53:47 | |
the fact it's become quite so pervasive in our culture. | 0:53:47 | 0:53:50 | |
SINGING IN HINDUSTANI | 0:53:50 | 0:53:54 | |
As the 20th century became the 21st, | 0:54:00 | 0:54:03 | |
musicians as far as India were now interpreting Summertime. | 0:54:03 | 0:54:07 | |
Amit Chaudhuri from Mumbai recognised that he could work | 0:54:11 | 0:54:14 | |
Summertime's languid lullaby qualities into India's classical music. | 0:54:14 | 0:54:20 | |
Indian music and the way you improvise in Indian music | 0:54:23 | 0:54:26 | |
allows you - often demands - that you slow down the tempo. | 0:54:26 | 0:54:30 | |
To make those improvisations possible. | 0:54:30 | 0:54:33 | |
That slowing down of the tempo, | 0:54:33 | 0:54:35 | |
which I have in my version, | 0:54:35 | 0:54:37 | |
also kind of nicely fits in with the idea of sleep. | 0:54:37 | 0:54:42 | |
There's something simple about the scales and about the song. | 0:54:45 | 0:54:49 | |
I think that's why it continues, its life continues. | 0:54:49 | 0:54:52 | |
# Oooh-oooh... # | 0:54:52 | 0:54:56 | |
SINGING IN FON | 0:54:56 | 0:54:58 | |
Angelique Kidjo is from the West African nation of Benin. | 0:54:58 | 0:55:02 | |
When she recorded her version of Summertime, she sang the song's lyrics in Benin's language - Fon. | 0:55:02 | 0:55:09 | |
SHE SINGS IN FON | 0:55:09 | 0:55:14 | |
You cannot translate English into Fon literally. | 0:55:18 | 0:55:22 | |
It doesn't work, because it's a language that paints a picture for you. | 0:55:22 | 0:55:26 | |
SHE SPEAKS FON | 0:55:26 | 0:55:28 | |
..which means Summertime. | 0:55:28 | 0:55:30 | |
It translates as Summertime but it means when the heat time comes. | 0:55:30 | 0:55:36 | |
Your daddy's rich and your ma is good-looking - | 0:55:40 | 0:55:43 | |
I say that in my language by saying that... | 0:55:43 | 0:55:47 | |
..your father have wealth. | 0:55:48 | 0:55:50 | |
It's not richness. | 0:55:50 | 0:55:51 | |
The wealth is the knowledge of life and your mom is good-looking, | 0:55:51 | 0:55:55 | |
your mother have such a beautiful soul. | 0:55:55 | 0:55:58 | |
So I take it from what Gershwin wrote to the reality of Africans. | 0:55:58 | 0:56:02 | |
Great songs that transcend all styles, languages, nationalities | 0:56:15 | 0:56:20 | |
have a beautiful simplicity at their very heart. | 0:56:20 | 0:56:24 | |
Summertime shares this quality with the other two most-covered songs in the world - | 0:56:24 | 0:56:30 | |
My Way and Yesterday. | 0:56:30 | 0:56:33 | |
A really good song touches people. | 0:56:34 | 0:56:37 | |
It means something to people and in this case it's meant something | 0:56:37 | 0:56:42 | |
to millions of people and all three of those songs on their own | 0:56:42 | 0:56:45 | |
level work like that, whether you prefer one more than the other, | 0:56:45 | 0:56:49 | |
they all just touch people. | 0:56:49 | 0:56:52 | |
Summertime's global appeal is also due to its brilliant ability | 0:56:55 | 0:57:00 | |
to trigger personal emotions in us all. | 0:57:00 | 0:57:04 | |
This song works if you're having a wonderful time | 0:57:04 | 0:57:08 | |
and if you're celebrating somewhere. | 0:57:08 | 0:57:10 | |
Or if you're having quite a bad time and you want summer. | 0:57:11 | 0:57:16 | |
You know, if you want to be looked after, this song is great, | 0:57:16 | 0:57:19 | |
and if you feel lost, this song is great. | 0:57:19 | 0:57:22 | |
It's extraordinary. | 0:57:22 | 0:57:25 | |
Today, Summertime is the most covered song on the planet. | 0:57:25 | 0:57:30 | |
Over 25,000 versions exist. | 0:57:30 | 0:57:34 | |
But more importantly, | 0:57:35 | 0:57:37 | |
Summertime is one of the most loved melodies in the world. | 0:57:37 | 0:57:41 | |
As George Gershwin's friend Kay Halle predicted it would | 0:57:41 | 0:57:45 | |
become when she first heard it all the way back in 1934. | 0:57:45 | 0:57:49 | |
People on the street, you can stop them and they've heard of Summertime. | 0:57:50 | 0:57:53 | |
They probably haven't heard of something written two or three years ago. | 0:57:53 | 0:57:57 | |
They probably couldn't name some Madonna song from 2005. | 0:57:57 | 0:58:01 | |
They probably couldn't name three Lady Gaga songs but they all know what Summertime is. | 0:58:01 | 0:58:05 | |
Summertime has magically tapped into something deep inside us all. | 0:58:07 | 0:58:12 | |
Nostalgia and innocence, sadness and joy, | 0:58:12 | 0:58:15 | |
and our intrinsic desire for freedom. | 0:58:15 | 0:58:19 | |
Summertime is a state of mind. | 0:58:22 | 0:58:25 | |
Everybody has got a Summertime somewhere. | 0:58:25 | 0:58:28 | |
Everybody knows what that means. | 0:58:28 | 0:58:30 | |
There's something about that song that makes people feel more free | 0:58:34 | 0:58:38 | |
when they're playing it and when they're listening to it. | 0:58:38 | 0:58:41 | |
I think that's the greatest achievement of all. | 0:58:41 | 0:58:44 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:59:06 | 0:59:09 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:59:09 | 0:59:12 |