Ella Fitzgerald: "Summertime"

Ella Fitzgerald sings Gershwins "Summertime" at a concert in Berlin - Germany.

"Summertime" is an aria composed by George Gershwin for the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess. The lyrics are by DuBose Heyward, the author of the novel Porgy on which the opera was based. According to wikipedia, the song soon became a popular and much recorded jazz standard, described as "without doubt... one of the finest songs the composer ever wrote....Gershwin's highly evocative writing brilliantly mixes elements of jazz and the song styles of blacks in the southeast United States from the early twentieth century."

here are some 15,000 different recorded versions of the song. In September 1936, a recording by Billie Holiday was the first to hit the national pop charts, reaching # 12. Other notable recordings include those by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald in 1957, Sam Cooke in 1961, and Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company on the 1968 album Cheap Thrills. The most commercially successful version was by Billy Stewart, who reached # 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966.


- Lyrics:

Summertime, and the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high
Oh! Your Daddy's rich and your Ma is good lookin'
So, hush little baby, don't you cry . .

One of these mornin's you're gonna rise up singin'
Then you'll spread your wings, and you'll take to the sky
But 'till that mornin' there's a nothin' can harm you,
with Daddy and Mammy standin' by . .

But 'till that mornin' there's a nothin' can harm you,
with Daddy and Mammy standin' by . .