Music for Grownups: Summer Songs

By: Richard Gehr | Source: AARP.org | 2008-06-05

There's a big difference between a great summer song and a great song about summer. Whether they deal with the season or not, great summer songs seem to be everywhere at once: They're those ubiquitous tunes you hear on every radio and boom box, on the street or at the beach, as you slog your way through the heat and humidity of June, July, and August.

There are plenty of great songs about summer, of course. Gershwin's "Summertime," DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince's "Summertime," the “Grease” hit "Summer Lovin'," and Nat King Cole's "Those Lazy, Hazy Days of Summer" are all great in their own ways. But with the exception of the Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City," the ceaselessly thrilling exception that proves the rule, they don't define summer.

The funny thing is, rarely did the songs that spent weeks of summertime at the top of Billboard  magazine's pop charts in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s scream “School’s Out for Summer,” “Let's Go Surfin' Now!,” or similar slogans now synonymous with the season. And yet these chart toppers are probably part of your musical DNA to this day. Don't believe me? Just take a look at some of summertime's biggest hits (and be sure to add your favorites in the Comments section below):

• From July 12 to Sept. 12, 1952, it would have been difficult to avoid Vera Lynn's sentimental "Auf Wiederseh'n Sweetheart." The wartime British star picked up the tune, so to speak, in a German bar. Her English translation became the first song by a foreign artist to reach number one on Billboard's pop chart.
  

• "I never cared much for diamonds and pearls/For honestly, honey, they just cost money." Big-band singer Kitty Kallen's sweet and simple comeback single, "Little Things Mean a Lot," was top of the pops from May 29 to Aug. 6, 1954. I can't imagine working up a sweat to this, but I can imagine lots of parents of boomers identifying with Kallen's thrifty sentiment.

• The following year, Bill Haley & His Comets changed everything, starting July 9 to Sept. 2, 1955, with "Rock Around the Clock."

• Elvis Presley owned the summer of 1957. His deceptively innocent "Teddy Bear" knocked Bobbys out of their socks from July 15 to Sept. 1. The fun ended shortly thereafter, when Elvis received an early Christmas present from Uncle Sam on Dec. 20—his draft notice.

• "Tossin' and Turnin'," by two-hit wonder Bobby Lewis (don't forget "One Track Mind"), probably seemed a little too timely during the sweltering nights of July 10 to Aug. 27, 1961.  

• You could say the same of the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," which, from July 10 to Aug. 6, 1965,  provided the national anthem for the youth quake waiting just around the corner.

• That wave crested the following summer, especially from Aug. 13 to Sept. 2, when the Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City" gave a title and a sound—or at least an unforgettable organ riff—to a dozen different types of urban discontent and euphoria. Donovan's "Sunshine Superman" took over the number-one spot, appropriately.

• Two very different but equally magnificent singles, the Doors' "Light My Fire" (July 29–Aug. 18) and Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billy Joe" (Aug. 26–Sept. 22), dominated the summer of '67. Ye olde Summer of Love could have received its name from the single those tunes sandwiched: the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love."

• There are a million stories hidden in Billboard's charts. The one about hit summer singles in the '60s ends on a weird note. The Nebraska duo Zager & Evans' technophobic "In the Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus)," had listeners creeping out from July 12 to Aug. 22, 1969.

• As the '60s slid into the '70s, summer went without a single stirring anthem for several years. It took "Love Will Keep Us Together" to unify a grateful nation once again, which it did from June 21 to July 18, 1975. Thank you Captain & Tennille.