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| 'Nothing says summer like breaking up from school' – Alice Cooper's 1972 classic. |
Having trashed Mungo
Jerry’s summer 1970 hit last time around, I thought I’d look back
through chart history to see if there has ever been such a phenomenon
as the bona fide summer chart hit. There have been plenty of songs
with ‘summer’ in the title, but they haven’t all charted in the
summer itself, if you count the summer months as being June, July and
August. To take a notable example, John Travolta and Olivia
Newton-John’s Summer Nights, clearly aimed at summer chart
success, didn’t chart here in the UK until mid-September. Others
have been even further off beam. Percy Faith’s Theme From a
Summer Place, which sounds like the essence of summer itself with
its dreamy 6/8 string-drenched melody, charted in March of 1960,
while Cliff Richard’s Summer Holiday entered the charts in
February 1963. If this seems inexplicable, there is at least a
valid reason in this case: Cliff’s song was the theme to a movie,
and movies don’t do as well in the summer months when punters,
quite rightly, don’t relish the thought of being stuck in the dark
with Cliff Richard, Una Stubbs and Richard O’Sullivan. In the cold
grey of February, however, with summer still a distant prospect, it’s
a different matter.
Taking a random
sample of songs that actually mention the ‘S’ word, I found that,
on the whole, they tended to enter the charts in September,
suggesting that record company timing has been historically up the
spout. Mungo Jerry, sadly, got it exactly right, entering the charts
at number 13 on 6th June 1970, and reaching number one the
following week, where they remained for another six weeks. It is somewhat
depressing to relate that In the Summertime didn’t drop out
of the charts until the middle of October, having spent the last last
four weeks of its run in the lower reaches of the top 50.
Clearly, Mungo
Jerry’s hit was a premeditated and cynical attempt at scoring a
summer hit with a summer-themed song. Luckily for everyone involved
with the release, May 1970 had been mostly dry, though with below
average amounts of sunshine, while June exceeded the average and was
notably sunny, apart from some heavy thunderstorms. Like ice-cream
vendors, Ray Dorset and pals must have banked on a decent summer to
assist sales of their summer song, but while June was mostly okay,
July was changeable and cool. Nevertheless, the great British public
kept on buying In the Summertime, as if in hope of appeasing
some meteorogical deity. It worked, almost: August brought a return
to warmer weather before turning wet in the third week, by which time
Mungo Jerry probably couldn’t have cared less, their master plan
having paid off handsomely. Incidentally, if you want to know where
I get all this weather data, you can find it here: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/learning/library/archive-hidden-treasures/monthly-weather-report-1970s
Writing a summer
song in hope of a summer hit might have worked in 1970, but it wasn’t
always the way. Taking late July as an average, and looking at the
top 20, we find surprisingly few summer themed or titled songs during
the 1960s and 70s. 1959 was, I am assured, a notable summer, and the
records show that most of Britain enjoyed dry, sunny weather from
June through to October. It was notably hot at times, and there was
talk of a drought as farmers waited in vain for rain to come and
water their crops. As a summer, it would remain unsurpassed until
1976. Hits of summer ‘59 included Bobby Darin’s Dream Lover,
Cliff Richard and the Drifers’ Living Doll and Connie
Francis’ Lipstick on Your Collar. Meanwhile, Russ Conway was
up and down the charts like a yo-yo with Side Saddle, Roulette
and China Tea all in the top thirty simultaneously. But in
spite of the weather, there was nothing remotely summery about the
songs in the charts.
With a peerless
summer in ‘59, we might have expected to see more summer-themed
chart action in 1960. But no. In fact, the only single I can find
that overtly acknowledges the time of year is Brian Hyland’s
Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini which was new in
at 31 on 14th July. It’s a similar picture in ’61 and
’62, and over the coming years about the only shameless
summer-themed chart entry is Cliff Richard’s On the Beach of
1964. You may well ask where were The Beach Boys when all this was
going on, a band inextricably linked with summer. Well, wherever they
were, it wasn’t in the British pop charts, at least not during the
key summer months. While Brian Wilson and his pals might have been
fixated on surfing, it wasn’t a popular pastime here in the UK, and
probably their most ‘summery’ hit of the 60s was California
Girls, charting in early September of 1965. It isn’t until 1966
and the Kinks’ Sunny Afternoon that we find a bona fide
summer single topping the charts at the right time of year; and while
1967 is familiar as the summer of love, and offered above average
amounts of sunshine in June and July, there was little sign of sunny
weather in the charts, where Procul Harum’s A Whiter Shade of
Pale dominated procedings during the summer months.
Fast forward to the
notable summer of 1976 and we find a similar picture. The only
bandwagon-jumpers of the season appear to have been Steve Harley and
Cockney Rebel, whose cover version of Here Comes the Sun looks
suspiciously like a cash-in, entering the charts on August 1st.
Assuming the band acted at the first sign of a prolonged heatwave and
picked an obvious fine weather song to cover in haste, they had every
chance of recording, pressing and releasing in time to pick up sales
on the back of the enduring fine weather, which indeed they did.
In fact, it wasn’t
that song, but another which seemed to embody the long, warm weeks of
1976 as far as I was concerned. That song was Afternoon Delight
by the Starland Vocal Band, which despite peaking at a meagre No. 18
on the chart, still sounds like the spirit of summer ‘76 whenever I
hear it.
This illustrates a
point: in the absence of cynically crafted summer hits like those of
Mungo Jerry, Steve Harley et. al, we make our own. The summers of my
childhood are imprinted in memory by such diverse waxings as Manfred
Mann’s My Name is Jack, Scott Walker’s The Lights of
Cincinatti, Jethro Tull’s Living in the Past and Vince
Hill’s The Importance of Your Love. One of the few actual
summer songs that did the job for me was Bobby Goldsboro’s Summer
(The First Time) [don’t forget those brackets] which began its
ten-week chart run in August 1973. From the opening bars with their ocean-drenched
crashing wave sound effects to the final reprise, this song says
summer in every bar (sorry if that sounds like a chocolate
commercial...) Even the key, B major, sounds like summer. I doubt any
other artist will ever nail it the way Bobby Goldsboro did, without
the slightest hint of a cash-in.
Another song that
did the job admirably, and tactically avoiding mentioning the ‘S’
word (in the title at any rate) was Alice Cooper’s 1972 hit
School’s Out. Unsurprisingly, this timely release reached
number one in the UK, and includes one of my favourite ‘bits’ in
a pop song – the ‘no more pencils’ refrain, which is musically
straining to break free, rising on two suspended fourths (C and D)
before breaking back out into the home key of E minor. You can almost
visualise the Bash Street kids bursting through the doors at the key
change. School’s Out was, in fact, a brilliant move on the
part of Mr. Furnier, who rightly recognised that nothing says
‘summer’ quite like breaking up from school. It was an observation
worthy of Chuck Berry.
Just behind
School’s Out in the charts of summer ‘72 we find a much
less creditable effort, a blatant attempt to snare some seasonal
sales by Terry Dactyl (actually Jona Lewie) and the ‘Dinosaurs’
in the form of Seaside Shuffle. Even at the time of its
release, I could sense the ghostly presence of In the Summertime
looming over the proceedings, and whilst it gave less offence
than its predecessor, I was still aware that there was something
faintly distasteful about Seaside Shuffle – the pop
equivalent of a ‘kiss me quick’ hat. Fortunately Lewie would
recover himself with some aplomb, albeit it would take another eight
and a bit years for it to happen, and when it did, it was with
another ‘seasonal’ single (although not intended as such when
originally recorded), Stop the Cavalry.
Mention of
Christmas brings us bang up to date and Roy Wood’s I Wish It
Could Be Christmas Every Day which has just been given a ‘summer’
makeover in the name of a Boots commercial. As cynical moves go, that
leaves Messrs T. Dactyl, M. Jerry et al well in the shade... one ten
in the shade, maybe?
Take it away Mr.
Goldsboro…
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