All language subtitles for Gershwins.Summertime.The.Song.That.Conquered.the.World.2011.1080p.WEBRip.x264-CBFM

# It's summertime

# And the livin' is easy... #

This is a journey into a song.

A song that's captured
the imagination of the world.

# Your daddy's rich

# And your mamma's good lookin'

# Won't you hush, pretty baby

# Don't you cry... #

I can play Summertime in Turkey,
I can play Summertime in Tokyo,

I can play Summertime in Sao Paulo,
I can play it in Kingston, Jamaica.

The audiences all know it.

# Then you'll spread your wings

# And take to the sky... #

Summertime
has got its own pair of wings.

I don't know why,
but they know Summertime.

Everybody knows Summertime.

Summertime is the most covered
song on the planet.

At least 25,000 versions exist.

SLOW BALLAD: # Summertime... #

From jazz to disco...

DISCO: # And the livin' is easy... #

SOUL: # Fish are jumpin'... #

..from blues rock...

BLUES: # And the livin' is easy... #

..to hip hop.

SLOW BLUES: # It's summertime

# And the livin' is easy... #

It's become
the ultimate hymn to summer.

Yet Summertime has taken
on other meanings too.

It's been re-invented throughout
the 20th century.

As a civil rights prayer...

..a hippie lullaby....

..an ode to seduction...

..and a modern freedom song.

# You're going to rise up
singing... #

But for the composer,
it was none of these things.

George Gershwin wrote Summertime
as the opening aria to an opera

and never dreamt of the global
impact it would have.

This is the story of how,
against all odds,

a forgotten melody
conquered the world.

George Gershwin was
born in New York in 1898

to Jewish immigrants from Russia.

At this time, there was a huge
migration of Jews from Europe

and black Americans from the South.

There was nothing to suggest that
George or his brother Ira,

sons of a shoe factory foreman were
destined for greatness.

This is a kid who grew up
in the rough and tumble of Brooklyn.

He was a streetwise troublemaker.

It was Ira who used to bail him out

when he got into trouble
with the police or the neighbours.

You couldn't see, in those days,
that this intensely-concentrated

musical mind would emerge.

# Rhythm, rhythm, rhythm that
pitter pats through my brain... #

Young George Gershwin might have
been a troublemaker,

but he had a passion for music,

which blossomed in
his teenage years.

# Comes in the morning
without any warning

# And hangs around me all day... #

After a short stint playing
the piano in a bar,

the teenage Gershwin was offered
the job of song-plugger

in the fiercely competitive
world of Tin Pan Alley.

By the 1920's, Gershwin was
writing hit songs like

Fascinating Rhythm and Oh, Lady
Be Good for Broadway musicals.

# Start a-hopping

# Never stopping... #

But for Gershwin this success
was not enough.

He was determined to rise
above his humble origins

and prove himself
as a serious composer.

MUSIC: "Rhapsody In Blue"
by George Gershwin

At the age of 25,
Gershwin composed Rhapsody In Blue,

a jazz-influenced
classical concerto.

It was a triumph.

But this Brooklyn marvel had
his eyes on an even greater prize -

a grand opera.

When he set out to write an operatic
work, it became known that

that's what he was doing
and there were snorts of derision

from various parts of the serious
and classical musical world

and that attitude remained
right the way through

to beyond the first night.

# Like the beat beat
beat of the tom-tom

# When the jungle shadows fall

# Like the tick tick tock
of the stately clock

# As it stands against the wall... #

Much of Gershwin's life
up to the early 1930s was Broadway.

This was the world of Cole Porter's
Night And Day and musicals

with frothy storylines, sparkling
lyrics and big show-stopping tunes.

# Night and day, you are the one... #

In choosing to write
a serious opera,

Gershwin was taking
a massive gamble.

He risked damaging his reputation
and alienating his huge audience.

But it was a calculated risk

because he believed he had
discovered just the right story

that would play to
his dramatic and musical strengths.

DuBose Heyward had written
a novel called Porgy,

not Porgy And Bess,
and Gershwin was not a great reader.

His apartment wasn't full of learned
books or even novels,

but for some reason,
he read it one night

and apparently he stayed up
until four in the morning

because it simply captivated him.

This novel, about a crippled black
beggar and his attempt to rescue

Bess from her pimp, allowed Gershwin
to write a revolutionary new opera

imbued with the African-American
music he loved so much.

# I got plenty of nothin'

# And nothing's plenty for me

# I got no car, I got no mule

# I got no misery

# The folks with plenty of
plenty... #

Gershwin travelled to Charleston,
South Carolina,

where the novel was set, immersing
himself in the black culture

of the area, particularly that
of Folly Island.

# What for? #

It was as though this New Yorker
had never lived anywhere else.

So we have to be grateful

that this chromium-plated,
Manhattan cocktail party hero

who had round his piano in New York
all these flappers

and his latest songs, which
he played for hours on end,

this was very different from the man
who was living in a shack

down in South Carolina with the sand
crabs and singing the songs,

which he was hearing with the local
community around there.

In fact, he got so much into this,
with such a great degree

of enthusiasm, DuBose Heyward said
when he was chanting

with those people, it was as though
he was one of those. Heywood said,

"I don't think any other white
man in America could have done it."

Back in New York,
Gershwin started pulling together

his South Carolina research,
shaping it into an opera score.

PIANO PLAYS

In 1934, he completed
one of the first compositions

for Porgy And Bess
at a friend's Manhattan apartment.

It was a lullaby called Summertime.

Kay Halle was a friend
of Gershwin's.

She's generally
described as a socialite

and she knew that Gershwin
had been working on a couple

of different versions of the lullaby
and none of them really worked

and he kept scrapping
the lullaby and rewriting it,
coming up with new ideas for it.

PIANIST PLAYS "SUMMERTIME"

'She came home one night,
late at night,

'and she heard this music
coming from her music room.

'And she said it was so exquisite.'

Now it sounded as though
he'd finally cracked it

and he'd got the finished version.

PIANIST PLAYS SUMMERTIME

'And she said she listened
and tears were coursing
down her cheeks.'

Like they say,
it was an "Aha!" moment.

She said the minute she heard it,
she knew what it was going to be.

The two of them,
there was this energy going on,

this electric connection where
the two of them looked at each other

and realised this was it,
this was going to be THE song.

And that everybody
was going to love it.

I think the phrase she used was,

"I knew it was going to be
beloved by the world."

# Summertime

# And the living is easy... #

Fancy being the first person,
apart from Gershwin,

to hear Summertime.

# And the cotton is high... #

# In olden days

# A glimpse of stocking was
looked on as something shocking

# Now, God knows

# Anything goes... #

In October 1935, Broadway's
Alvin Theatre had just finished

a hugely successful run
of Cole Porter's musical,
Anything Goes.

# Anything goes. #

It was here at the Alvin,
not in a grand opera house,

that Gershwin now presented
his daring new work, Porgy And Bess.

Even more radically,

it was performed by
a classically-trained
all-black cast.

And on the first night,

as the curtain rose in front
of an unsuspecting audience,

the first vocal performance heard

was the opening aria,
Summertime.

# One of these mornings

# You're going to rise up singing

# Then you'll spread your wings

# And you'll take to the sky... #

'It's sung by a young mother
to her child. It's a lullaby.

'It's the end of
a swelteringly hot day.

'It's early bedtime for this child
that must go to sleep

'as the late afternoon is beginning
to give way to the evening.'

And the song has something that is
wonderfully languid about it.

Something that is languid because
there has been sweltering heat.

# S-u-u-u-u-u-u-mmertime... #

There's also something
plangent about it.

There's something
in the musical line

that touches on melancholy.

Oh, the love of the mother,
cradling the child,

and therefore a kind of sadness
that the child is going
to go to sleep.

And...

a kind of sadness that the child,
one day, is going to grow up and...

..leave the coop,
is going to fly away

but that's also going to be
wonderful.

But despite its apparent simplicity,

Summertime had hidden depths.

We might ask ourselves why is
Summertime actually in a minor key?

HE PLAYS A MINOR CHORD

A very sad-sounding key, a minor
key, because, after all,

if you look at the lyric here
there's nothing but good news
for the baby here.

The fish are jumping, there's...

the cotton is high,
your daddy's rich,

your mum's good-looking.
This is not a threatening lyric.

All of this is positive and yet...

HE PLAYS MINOR CHORD

..it's written in this bluesy,
minor key.

Since the mid-1920's,
George Gershwin's brother, Ira,

had often collaborated with him.

Ira wrote the snappy,
urbane lyrics to many classic
Gershwin compositions.

including 'S Wonderful.

# 'S wonderful

# 'S marvellous

# That you should care for me

# 'S awful nice

# 'S paradise... #

George and Ira Gershwin,
as well as DuBose Heyward,

were all credited
with writing Summertime,

but this composition was believed
to be much more the work

of just George Gershwin
and DuBose Heyward.

'If Ira had worked on it,
it would have had some of his wit,

'some of his energy, some of his sort
of, verbal magic'

which it doesn't. The fact that
Summertime works so well is because
it doesn't have any of those things.

# And the living is easy... #

Heyward wrote the lyrics first.

Ira Gershwin edited it slightly.

He took out a couple of conjunctions
and sort of just gave it a more

firm poetic grounding, but Ira
said, "DuBose Heyward is a poet,
I'm not. And this is poetry."

# ..is high... #

There's a thousand images,
millions, probably,

that could have been chosen
to start this poem,

to describe Summertime
and there's just two -

fish jumping and cotton high.

And how the writer has put
these two things together

so that they work in the minds
of everybody who reads them,

you know,
it's the sign of great lyrics.

# Hush, little baby

# Don't you cry. #

# It ain't necessarily so

# It ain't necessarily so

# The things that you're liable

# To read in the Bible

# It ain't necessarily so... #

In 1935, the original Broadway
run of Porgy And Bess,

despite, or because of,
its innovations, confused critics
at the time,

and it was not the triumph Gershwin
had so hoped for.

It ran, Porgy And Bess, initially

for, I think, 128 performances,
which is marvellous for an opera.

You'd have to do it at the opera
house many seasons

but it was not a big success
in terms of a run on Broadway.

And he was very disappointed.

He lost all the money
that he'd invested,

including the copying
of parts and everything

and it never made
money for him in his lifetime.

Just two years after Summertime
was first performed on Broadway,

George Gershwin started
to experience severe headaches
and blackouts.

These were the first signs
of a fatal brain tumour

that would soon kill him.

The saddest and most poignant thing,
of course, about the Gershwin story

is that he died 11 weeks
short of his 39th birthday.

He was among that hapless group
of composers, Mozart and Schubert

and Mendelssohn and Bellini, Chopin,

who never got to their 40th birthday,
even, at the height of his powers.

George Gershwin
died on 11th July, 1937.

He would never know how immortal
Summertime would become.

Summertime might have remained
an aria in a forgotten opera.

But something happened that set it
on the road to global recognition.

It occurred, not in the glittering
neon world of Broadway,

but in one of New York's
poorest neighbourhoods, Harlem.

Harlem was the heart of New York's
black community

and fast becoming
the spiritual home of jazz.

At first, many Harlem jazz musicians
had been offended by Porgy And Bess.

Duke Ellington declared
that this black-inspired opera

written by three white men was
"not in the Negro idiom."

'I can understand people being
jealous of Gershwin'

because when you're as good
as Gershwin was,

jealousy is just an
automatic thing.

JAZZ INTERPRETATION OF "SUMMERTIME"

One young singer dared to disagree
with Duke Ellington.

She was the child of a broken home
called Eleanora Fagan.

But the world would come to know
her as Billie Holiday.

# Summertime

# And the living is easy

# Fish are jumping

# And the cotton is high... #

She recognized that this
operatic aria, Summertime,

could be transformed
into a jazz tune.

Billie's hot, bluesy version
hit the charts in 1936

and was crucial in launching
her solo career.

# ..little baby, don't you cry... #

'Billie holiday made the first'

pop...that's to say
recorded by someone not in any way

associated with the show,
and she makes it swing.

She's got a big drum vamp going on,

and yet it's one of the definitive
recordings of it.

So it lends itself to the artist,

and Gershwin, unlike some of his
colleagues,

loved the liberties that
great jazz and popular musicians
would take with his music.

He had no problem with that at all.

# There's nothing can harm you

# With daddy and... #

Billie Holiday recorded Summertime

when America was in the middle
of the Great Depression.

25% of the US population
was unemployed.

Black Americans suffered terribly,

and Billie Holiday's Summertime
captured their anger.

'This line, "Your daddy's rich
and your mamma's good-looking"
is the ultimate.

'And what's so wonderful about it
is saying to this baby,'

in the world where we live in,
in the world that I want for you,

this is what I want for you,

'in this era when no one has any
money, no one has anything.'

# One of these mornings

# You're going to rise up singing

# Then you'll spread your wings

# And you'll take to the sky... #

'I always thought that her version,'

it's faster
and it's a little more severe

than we're used to hearing
the song in the show itself.

It's a lot less like a lullaby.

'One way to look at it, she's not
just singing a baby to sleep,

'but she's encouraging
a race of people to wake up.'

'There had been riots in a Harlem
where people were protesting

'against places where
they couldn't go.

'And because this was the '30s,
because it was the depression,

'that was all very much
in people's consciousness.'

Billie would have sung it that way.

That's how she was,
that's how she'd have swung it.

BEBOP JAZZ MUSIC PLAYS

Billie Holiday had brilliantly
adapted Summertime into jazz.

But this music
was about to be radically
updated during World War Two

when a new breed of black musician
forged a revolutionary sound.

Bebop.

Charlie Parker was
THE icon of this fast,

frenetic style, whose spiky rhythm
shocked many jazz lovers.

HE PLAYS BEPOP

But his 1949 recording,
Parker With Strings,

was an attempt to make bebop
more palatable to a wider audience.

On this album, Parker decided
to record a version of Summertime.

CHARLIE PARKER PLAYS "SUMMERTIME"

'People like Charlie Parker,'

they weren't thinking
about covering something,

they were playing
something because they liked it,

because people asked them
to play it all the time.

Because it provided them
with a...

a bridge to the audience.

'Parker stays fairly close
to the melody but he plays it'

with an incredible ebullience.

I mean, there's no other recording
even now that's quite like Parker's.

'He plays it
with a sense of triumph.

'It's not so much a lullaby,
but it's a kind of expression

'of liberation, this sense that
the song is not so much'

"Go to sleep, darling,"

but, "We are marching
into the next world here."

With Summertime now given such
a significant blessing by the bebop
king, Charlie Parker,

other jazz instrumentalists,
like Art Pepper,

Chet Baker,

John Coltrane,

and Bill Evans followed his lead,

all helped establish Summertime
as a classic jazz standard.

JAZZ INTERPRETATION OF "SUMMERTIME"

'I think, as an instrumentalist,
when you approach a piece,

'a classic like this,
which has such a strong lyric,

'that has such a strong melody,

'you're able to explore it
in other ways.'

Sometimes in ways
that the vocalist wouldn't explore.

They wouldn't bend certain melodies

in the way that we would
as instrumentalists do.

'As a kind of jazz standard,
it is the basis'

for a lot of people doing
improvising around it,

and if this was some incredibly
complicated melody,

it would leave very little room
for that kind of
improvisation and embellishment.

'The lyric is in your head
all the time.

'And that's actually why I like
instrumental versions

'because I know the lyric.
There are only a very few lines
to this song'

but when you hear an instrumentalist
taking that melody

and doing something with it,
as Miles does,

playing a wonderful
improvisation on it,

then you just...you have that
in your consciousness already.

MILES DAVIS' INTERPRETATION
OF "SUMMERTIME"

Miles Davis included
his interpretation of Summertime

on his 1958 Porgy And Bess album.

'When Miles Davis did Summertime,

'it's the perfect soundtrack'

for a car ride
somewhere in the summer.

'Summertime does seem
sort of autobiographical for Miles.

'His daddy was rich
and his ma was good-looking.'

'But, for the most part,
it's an instrumental'

version that explores
the music that Gershwin wrote.

'It's the most vocalised playing
he had done on recording
up to that time

'and very rarely afterwards
does he equal it.

'And he said it was some
of the hardest playing he ever did

'because he felt he had to convey'

the meaning of Summertime,
the lyric of Summertime.

It has a wonderful
kind of lightness about it.

It seems to float above the ground,
but it's not

a portrait of the South, nor is it
a portrait of life in New York.

It's Miles producing something
intangible, it's indefinable.

# I wouldn't have left no gate
Yeah

# Bobby's hen pickled in a grate
Yeah

# Keep your eyes on the prize

# Hold on, hold on... #

In the mid-1950s, the cry
for civil rights intensified

as black Americans
embraced a strategy
of non-violent direct action.

# Keep your eyes on the prize

# Hold on, hold on... #

Few would have guessed
that Summertime would play
a role in this movement.

Gospel music gave the civil rights
struggle much of its moral strength

and the Queen Of Gospel,
Mahalia Jackson,

recognised Summertime as a hymn
to a better life for her people.

# Summertime...

# And the living is easy

# Fish are jumping

# And the cotton is high... #

It's about
the civil rights' struggle.

Hush, little baby, don't you cry.

It's about, we're gonna survive,
we're gonna win.

We're gonna overcome this

and so this song became an anthem,
of a sort.

# Oh, your daddy is rich

# And your ma is good-lookin'... #

But Mahalia Jackson did something
extraordinary with Summertime.

She recorded it as medley, pairing
it with Motherless Child,

a black spiritual about a baby
who has nothing.

# One of these mornings

# You're gonna rise up singing... #

She almost never sang anything
that wasn't a religious song.

So, when you're her and you choose
to sing Summertime

and connect it to... Sometimes I
feel like a motherless child,

see, that's a big one there.

See, that's fairly heavy.

Mahalia Jackson was from Chicago.

Her version of Summertime was
affected by a tragic murder

that rocked the city's black
population in 1955.

At that time, a young southsider,
named Emmett Till,

had gone to Mississippi
to visit his relatives

and we don't know what happened.

Either he looked at a white woman,

maybe said a wise crack.

Anyway, he wound up in the Pearl
River, dead.

# Like a motherless child

# Sometimes I feel...

# Like a motherless child... #

Mahalia Jackson recorded her
version of Summertime in 1956,

a year after Emmett Till's murder.

# ..like a motherless child... #

So, she's mourning the fact that...

When you hear about Emmett Till,
it brings all the terror back.

It brings back the depression.

It brings back the fear.

# But till that morning

# Nothing will harm you... #

Through melding those
two songs together,

she says, "White America, you see
the fish hop, you see all that.

"And the cotton is high, let me tell
you what's inside that cotton field.

"Let me tell you what it
looks like in there."

So, Mahalia sees inside
that cotton patch.

She sees a corpse, because, that's
what would have been in there.

# Well, Summertime

# And the living is easy

# Fish are jumping

# And the cotton is high

# Your daddy's rich

# And your mommy's good-lookin'... #

By the late 1950s, Summertime
had been recorded in all styles
of black music,

jazz, gospel, rhythm and blues.

# One of these mornings

# You're gonna jump up and see

# Then you spread your wings

# And you take to the sky

# Until that morning
there is nothing... #

It's got to be rare that
somebody can write a song

about another race, and then
the people from that race

start to own the song

because it is so like who
and what they are.

For many, the ultimate version

of Summertime was by the first lady

of song, Ella Fitzgerald.

# Summertime... #

APPLAUSE

# And the living is easy

# Fish are jumping... #

There is a clarity about
the way she sings.

You can read so much into the song.

In its way, it's a perfect...

Her performance is as perfect
as it can be.

# Your daddy's rich... #

After George Gershwin's death,

his brother, Ira, had continued
writing lyrics for movie scores
and Broadway musicals.

He once admitted, "I never knew how
good our songs were until I heard
Ella Fitzgerald sing them."

You can always tell a great jazz
artist if they can take a standard
and make it their own.

If you hear Ella perform this,
it's as if she wrote it.

She really owned that song.

# One of these mornings

# You're gonna rise up singing... #

Ella's recording was a crossover hit

wowing white as well
as black audiences.

George Gershwin was now
considered one of the great
American composers

and Porgy And Bess was finally
experiencing long overdue acclaim.

This started with a Gershwin biopic,
Rhapsody In Blue,

which featured
a Porgy And Bess sequence.

# Summertime and the living
is easy... #

The opera's reputation
steadily grew, and in 1959

was made into a Hollywood
blockbuster by Otto Preminger.

But just when Summertime had
climbed the dizzy heights

of both the jazz and opera worlds,

its hard-won status was now
threatened by a brand new sound.

# You ain't nothing
but a hound dog

# Crying all the time

# You ain't nothing
but a hound dog

# Crying all the time

# Well, you never caught a rabbit
and you ain't no friend of mine... #

In the mid-1950s, singers
like Elvis Presley revolutionised
the American musical landscape,

turning white teenagers
on to black rhythms.

# Yeah, you ain't never
caught a rabbit

# And you ain't no friend
of mine... #

Yet, incredibly, Summertime
would do what no other
jazz standard would do...

It fitted in with rock and roll.

# Summertime

# And the living is easy... #

Summertime was a song that early
rock and roll singers could perform,

in their own style,
and yet establish a relationship
with an earlier generation.

# And your ma is good-lookin'

# So, hush little baby

# Don't you cry... #

Well, Gene Vincent and Ricky Nelson

had a huge effect on British bands
in the early '60s.

# You're gonna spread your wings

# And take to the sky... #

Ricky Nelson was a particular
favourite of mine.

I really liked his voice.

His version is one where he sticks
very close to the melody.

It just works.

# And daddy and mommy,
they're standing by... #

In 1965, The Zombies,
from St Albans,

were one of the very first rock
groups to cover Summertime.

I was familiar with the song but I
don't know anything its history.

It was just this arrangement that
interested us and interested me.

It was an opportunity to do
something that was different

to what many of the bands
were playing at the time.

It was something, which gave us
an opportunity to improvise

and the mood was fantastic.

# It's summertime

# And the living is easy... #

We were playing in clubs and pubs
and we got a great reaction.

I think, it was quite brave of us to
play it in a rock environment.

It's surprised me even that
to the present day.

You can still play soft ballads
to people if they are good ballads.

# Why don't you hush, pretty baby

# Don't you cry... #

I loved the construction of the song.

Gershwin totally understands
what it is to write a song,
to produce music.

On the feeling level, on the
slightly magical level,

where, if you write a song,
you reach out and grab something.

He has reached out and grabbed that.

That is something that people
universally tap into.

The British invasion of America
in the mid-1960s

was spearheaded by The Beatles
and The Rolling Stones.

The Zombies were very much
a part of this invasion

and helped popularise
Summertime with a new generation
of American teenagers.

I'd like to think that The Zombies
did contribute to the mystique

and the popularity of Summertime.

We always included it in our
repertoire when we were playing,

especially in America.

I think a lot of young people
in America would have been
introduced to that song,

that perhaps wouldn't have heard it
in any other way.

# Summertime... #

As the '60s progressed, it became
increasingly apparent

that Summertime could be
interpreted from some very
different perspectives.

# Fish are jumping

# And the cotton is high... #

The Julie London record is clearly
a romantic

interpretation of Summertime.

A seductive interpretation,
not at all maternal.

This is not a woman trying
to get a baby to go to sleep,

She's trying to get somebody to go
to bed, but not to sleep.

It's a "come on" song to a lover.

It's sensuous, very laid-back,
it's witty.

It's lithe and, in its way,
it's just as authentic.

It's still the song.

It's not that she's turned it
into something else,

she's just found another place
to go with it.

She totally made it
because of her looks

and because she looks
so glamorous and so hot.

She's on every album cover,
posing seductively.

A lot of men and boys, bought those
covers because of the images.

When you got home and played
the records, she really delivers.

She's not a tease.

# ..standing by... #

Now...

Zip me up.

Summertime's roots within
a 1930s opera were now so distant

that in the flowering mid-'60s
music scene of San Francisco,

it was believed by many
to be a traditional folk song.

# Yes, summertime

# And the livin' is so easy... #

I'd wager everyone in Big Brother
& The Holding Company

thought of that as a folk song.

There had just been this folk
revival shortly before that.

They were used to playing
that song in coffee houses.

I doubt that they thought of it
as a jazz song or an opera song.

I think they thought of it as a folk
song, like House Of The Rising Sun.

# Your daddy's rich... #

In 1966, Janis Joplin joined
the San Francisco rock band,

Big Brother & The Holding Company.

They recorded one of the most
celebrated versions of Summertime

that included a new introduction
by Sam Andrew.

Bach has a prelude that starts up.
He has this thing and it goes...

HE SINGS THE TUNE

It's a very typical Bach motif.

So I just slowed that down.

It's exactly that
and I slowed it way down

and used that as kind of a
motivating force for Summertime.

INTRODUCTION PLAYS

Summertime is such a great song.

It was something
Janis loved to sing.

# Summertime, time, time, time

# Time

# For livin' easy... #

She sang the song to herself.
I think she was rocking herself.

She was singing a lullaby to herself

but she was also singing it
to the universe, to the audience.

She was reassuring them.

This is a song that will calm people
because it is a lullaby.

# Your daddy's rich

# And your ma's

# So good looking, babe... #

Janis Joplin's voice has always been
a voice that haunts me

every time I listened to it

because there is something
in her voice

that makes me feel like she knew
she was not going to last long.

And every minute, every second
she'd got to give it all.

And she was able to do
a version of Summertime

that would keep the
lullaby part of it,

keep everything we've said before
but with her urgency to it.

# Woah

# One of these mornings

# Shine, your eyes upset, baby

# I said you're gonna go

# Honey, gonna spread your wings

# Gonna take, take to... #

If you don't enjoy Summertime
while you are alive, shame on you.

I'm telling you, just embrace life
in summer or any other time.

That's what her version makes me
feel like. Gives me goosebumps.

She mines a particular quality of
the song most people left behind.

Even though I find her performance
painful in many respects,

because her voice was so
stretched out of shape,

and that's the blues quality.

I mean, she sings it as the blues.

She screeches at the top. Almost,
it's Summertime in extremis.

# Your dad's rich

# And your ma's good looking
baby... #

As well as performing it live,
Big Brother & The Holding Company

included Summertime on their number
one album, Cheap Thrills.

This was one of the biggest selling
records in America in 1968

and gave Summertime
a massive new audience.

The LP cover was designed
by the cartoonist Robert Crumb.

The idea behind his
Summertime illustration,

with its image of a black maid
with a white baby,

was to satirise white stereotypes
of African-Americans,

but it still offended some.

The Black Panthers were really upset
about that depiction

and they black-balled the album.

They hated that depiction.

In America, the summers of the 1960s

were intimately related to love-ins
and flower power,

and Janis Joplin's version
of Summertime

fed into that notion of
a beautiful, psychedelic summer.

But the summers of the 1960s
for many black Americans

were the long, hot summers of rage.

Again, it's a characteristic
of the song that,

not only can it withstand
those different treatments,

it has been treated in those
different ways

with some very dark, negative,

broken versions of Summer.

Albert Ayler's tense, discordant
version of Summertime

perfectly encapsulated
the black American mood of anger

and disaffection in the 1960s.

Summertime meant to black people,

how many black people are going
to be killed by police this year?

How many rednecks are going
to murder somebody?

How many churches are going
to be bombed?

How many demonstrations are going to
be had in which people are going to

act towards their fellow citizens

like wild dogs?

DISCORDANT JAZZ VERSION OF
"SUMMERTIME"

Albert Ayler is saying,
"Uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh,

"I don't want you to get it.

"I want you to be irritated.

"I want you to be upset
because in the upset and irritation,

"you can see what people are saying.

"They're saying no.

"And this, I'm saying no to
the beauty of Summertime."

# Summertime

# And the living is easy

# Fish are jumping

# And the cotton is high... #

At the end of the 1960s, Summertime
was everywhere in America,

three decades since its birth.

# ..and your ma is... #

It was now set for world domination.

# Summertime

# And the living is easy... #

Starting in the 1950s and '60s,

musicians in the Caribbean
picked up on Summertime.

The song travelled to Havana...

# Well, your daddy's rich... #

There's a wonderful version by a
Cuban singer called Enrique Herrera.

Just with conga drums.

Just voice and congas,
very elemental.

But it's very, very powerful indeed.

Summertime also entered Puerto Rico.

You could feel the heat of the beach
and the heat of the Afro-Cuban
rhythms of the congas of Africa even.

Latin music in general is a very
happy kind of music, very danceable.

This song fits right into that
category.

Summertime travelled to Trinidad.

It's really African-based
and it's African, even though

it's written by a Jewish man,
it's really an African-based song

and Latin rhythms just
fell into this naturally.

And on to Jamaica.

REGGAE VERSION OF SUMMERTIME PLAYS

Every culture has their folk music
so, if you look at reggae music

which is all about survival,

all about the voice

of the underdog, erm...

a song like Summertime is
particularly relevant.

# One of these mornings...

# You're gonna rise up singing... #

In the early '70s BB Seaton
cut his reggae version of Summertime
in Kingston, Jamaica.

The melody is so relaxed that you
could go to sleep singing it.

Putting it on a reggae rhythm,
I think that gave it life.

You know, I mean, because when I
was singing it I remember the beat,

you know, it was so pulsating,

that I was actually floating
on top of the rhythm,

with that melody.

# ..with your daddy

# Sta-a-a-anding by... #

From Jamaica, Summertime breezed
on down through the Tropics

to Rio de Janeiro.

For this song to have had quite
such an extraordinary ability

to remain with us and to be
transformed and to be played

and sung by so many people
it has to have these very
adaptable qualities.

I think it's the adaptability of it
that is perhaps at the root of the

fact it's become quite so pervasive
in our culture.

SINGING IN HINDUSTANI

As the 20th century became the 21st,

musicians as far as India were now
interpreting Summertime.

Amit Chaudhuri from Mumbai
recognised that he could work

Summertime's languid
lullaby qualities into India's
classical music.

Indian music and the way you
improvise in Indian music

allows you - often demands that
you slow down the tempo.

To make those improvisations
possible.

That slowing down of the tempo,

which I have in my version,

also kind of nicely fits in
with the idea of sleep.

There's something simple about
the scales and about the song.

I think that's why it continues,
its life continues.

# Oooh-oooh... #

SINGING IN FON

Angelique Kidjo is from
the West African nation of Benin.

When she recorded her version of
Summertime, she sang the song's
lyrics in Benin's language - Fon.

SHE SINGS IN FON

You cannot translate
English into Fon literally.

It doesn't work, because it's a
language that paints a picture
for you.

SHE SPEAKS FON

..which means Summertime.

It translates as Summertime but it
means when the heat time comes.

Your daddy's rich
and your ma is good-looking -

I say that in my language
by saying that...

your father have wealth.

It's not richness.

The wealth is the knowledge of life
and your mom is good-looking,

your mother have such
a beautiful soul.

So I take it from what Gershwin wrote
to the reality of Africans.

Great songs that transcend all
styles, languages, nationalities

have a beautiful simplicity
at their very heart.

Summertime shares this quality
with the other two most-covered
songs in the world -

My Way and Yesterday.

A really good song touches people.

It means something to people
and in this case it's meant something

to millions of people and all
three of those songs on their own

level work like that, whether you
prefer one more than the other,

they all just touch people.

Summertime's global appeal is also
due to its brilliant ability

to trigger personal emotions
in us all.

This song works
if you're having a wonderful time

and if you're celebrating somewhere.

Or if you're having quite a bad time
and you want summer.

You know, if you want to be looked
after, this song is great,

and if you feel lost,
this song is great.

It's extraordinary.

Today, Summertime is the most
covered song on the planet.

Over 25,000 versions exist.

But more importantly,

Summertime is one of the most loved
melodies in the world.

As George Gershwin's friend
Kay Halle predicted it would

become when she first heard it all
the way back in 1934.

People on the street, you can stop
them and they've heard of Summertime.

They probably haven't heard
of something written two or three
years ago.

They probably couldn't name some
Madonna song from 2005.

They probably couldn't name three
Lady Gaga songs
but they all know what Summertime is.

Summertime has magically tapped
into something deep inside us all.

Nostalgia and innocence,
sadness and joy,

and our intrinsic desire
for freedom.

Summertime is a state of mind.

Everybody has got a Summertime
somewhere.

Everybody knows what that means.

There's something about that song
that makes people feel more free

when they're playing it
and when they're listening to it.

I think that's the greatest
achievement of all.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media