On This Day (1936): Billie Holiday charted with “Summertime,” the most recorded song in history

Summertime Billie Holiday

Writer(s): George Gershwin (music)/ DuBose Heyward/Ira Gershwin (lyrics) (see lyrics here) First Charted: September 12, 1936 Peak: 12 US, 3 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 6.3 video, -- streaming

Awards (Billie Holiday): Awards (Sidney Bechet): Awards (Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong):

About the Song: It has been widely reported and accepted for years that the Beatles’ “Yesterday” is the most recorded song of all time. It isn’t. Not by a longshot. The song has been said to be recorded as many as four thousand times, but a group known as the Summertime Connection says they know of at least 82,000 public performances of “Summertime,” of which more than 67,000 have been recorded. GW Despite all those recordings, the song astonishingly only charted once in the first 50+ years of recorded music PM when Billie Holiday took it to #12 in 1936. In the rock era, Sam Cooke (#81 BB, 1957), Herb Alpert (#28 AC, 1971) the Marcels (#78 BB, 1961), Ricky Nelson (#89 BB, 1962), and the Chris Columbo Quintet (#93 BB, 1963) all had minor hits with the song. In 1966, Billy Stewart had a top ten hit with the song. Fun Boy Three hit #18 with it on the UK charts in 1982. Janis Joplin’s blues-rock version with Big Brother & the Holding Company didn’t chart, but is one of the best known versions. SF The song also became a jazz standard with popular versions from Sidney Bechet as well as Ella Fitzgerald with Louis Armstrong. Others who’ve recorded the song include Tori Amos, Cab Calloway, Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Miles Davis, Lana Del Rey, Dennis DeYoung, Tommy Dorsey, Peter Gabriel, Al Green, Herbie Hancock, Lena Horne, Mahalia Jackson, Al Jarreau, Annie Lennox, Paul McCartney, Willie Nelson, the Platters, Lou Rawls, R.E.M., the Righteous Brothers, Marty Robbins, Pete Seeger, Nina Simone, Sonny & Cher, Sarah Vaughan, Dionne Warwick, Brian Wilson, and the Zombies. SH George Gershwin composed the aria in 1934 for folk opera Porgy and Bess, based on the 1926 DuBose Heyward novel Porgy, a top seller about a South Carolina black community. Heyward and his wife Dorothy turned it into a Broadway play and Gershwin, after reading the novel and seeing the play, turned it into a musical, SF with his brother Ira and Heyward contributing lyrics. George visited Folly Island, off the South Carolina coast, where the opera is set. He observed the local customs and soaked in their music and idioms. LW Originally, Bess had a minor role. However, when Anne Brown – the first African-American singer admitted to Juilliard – contacted Gershwin, he let her sing for him and started crafting songs around her. He expanded the role to the point that he renamed the musical Porgy and Bess. Anne Brown played the role when it opened on Broadway on Ocrober 10, 1935. “Summertime” is sung four times throughout the musical, but most notably as a lullaby to a baby right after the overture. The song mixed “elements of jazz and the song styles of blacks in the southeast United States from the early twentieth century.” AMG Heyward was inspired by the lyrics for “All My Trials,” a southern folk spiritual lullaby. WK The song has also been considered an adaptation of the African American spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim called the lyrics for this and “My Man’s Gone Now” “the best lyrics in the musical theater.” WM Resources: DMDB Encyclopedia entry for Sidney Bechet AMG All Music Guide (by Robert Cummings) GW GuinnessWorldRecords.com (2017). “Most Recorded Song” LW Alan Lewens (2001). Popular Song – Soundtrack of the Century. Billboard Books: New York, NY. Page 69. SH SecondHandSongs.com WM Wayback Machine PM Joel Whitburn (1986). Pop Memories 1890-1954. Record Research, Inc: Menomonee Falls, WI. Page 586. WK Wikipedia Related Links: First posted 1/24/2020; last updated 9/10/2023.

50 years ago: Porgy and Bess debuted on stage

Porgy and Bess George Gershwin (music), Ira Gershwin & Dubose Heyward (lyrics)

The Musical

Stage Debut: September 30, 1935 Opened on Broadway: October 10, 1935 Number of Performances: 124 Opened at London’s West End: ? Number of Performances: ? Movie Release: June 24, 1959

Cast Album Recorded: 1940, 1942 Soundtrack Charted: July 13, 1959 Peak *: 8 US, 7 UK Sales (in millions) *: 0.5 US Genre: show tunes/classical – opera * 1959 soundtrack

Tracks: Song Title (Performers) [time] Overture (Decca Symphony Orchestra) / Summertime (Anne Brown) [3:40] 1 A Woman Is a Sometime Thing (Edward Matthews, Harriet Jackson, Eva Jessye Choir) [2:46] 2 My Man’s Gone Now (Anne Brown, Eva Jessye Choir) [4:05] 1 It Takes a Long Pull to Get There (Edward Matthews) [2:06] 2 I Got Plenty O’ Nuttin’ (Todd Duncan, Eva Jessye Choir) [2:42] 1 Buzzard Song (Todd Duncan, Eva Jessye Choir) [3:44] 1 Bess, You Is My Woman Now (Todd Duncan, Anne Brown, Evay Jessye Choir) [4:34] 1 It Ain’t Necessarily So (Todd Duncan, Eva Jessye Choir) [2:46] 1 What You Want Wild Bess? (Anne Brown, Todd Duncan) [3:00] 2 Strawberry Woman’s Call (Helen Dowdy, Gladys Goode) / Crab Man’s Call (William Wookfolk, Georgette Harvey) [3:05] I Loves You, Porgy (Todd Duncan, Anne Brown) [3:24] 2 The Requiem (Eva Jessye Choir) [3:57] 1 There’s a Boat Dat’s Leavin’ Soon for New York (Avon Long, Anne Brown) [3:02] 2 Porgy’s Lament/Finale (Todd Duncan, Eva Jessye Choir) [3:20] 1 1 Tracks recorded in 1940 by the original 1935 Broadway cast. Released as volume 1. WC 2 Tracks recorded in 1942 by the Broadway cast for the 1942 revival. Released as volume 2. WC In 1950, the albums were combined into one collection called Selections from George Gerswhin’s Folk Opera Porgy and Bess. CA Singles/Hit Songs: These were covers of songs from this musical which became hits: ”I Got Plenty O’ Nuttin’” – Leo Reisman (#5, 1935) ”It Ain’t Necessarily So” – Leo Reisman, #16, 1935), Bing Crosby (#18, 1936) “Summertime” – Billie Holiday (#12, 1936), Sam Cooke (#81, 1957), The Marcels (#78, 1961), Rick Nelson (#89, 1962), Chris Colombo Quintet (#93, 1963), Billy Stewart (#10, 1966) “I Loves You, Porgy” – Nina Simone (#18, 1959) Total Running Time: 49:01

Rating: 4.387 out of 5.00 (average of 10 ratings from different versions) Awards: (Click on award to learn more). Awards (Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong): (Click on award to learn more). Awards (Miles Davis & Gil Evans): (Click on award to learn more).

About the Show: Porgy and Bess is based on the novel Porgy, written by DuBose Heyward, and the play of the same name which he co-wrote with his wife Dorothy. It focuses on “African American life in the fictitious Catfish Row (based on the real-life Cabbage Row) in Charleston, South Carolina, in the early 1920s,” WK telling the story of Porgy, a crippled black man living in the slums, and his efforts to rescue Bess from her pimp (Crown) and drug dealer (Sportin’ Life). “The opera is admired for Gershwin’s innovative synthesis of European orchestral techniques with American jazz and folk music idioms.” WK “After a furiously paced apprenticeship mastering Broadway song-and-dance musical comedy formulas, from the mid-‘20s on…As early as 1922, in the one-act opera Blue Monday, Gershwin had shown a flair for drama with a confident mingling of pop, blues, and jazz, though it was unmatched by literary discrimination; and his scintillant score is undone by a ridiculous book.” AMG Gershwin was intrigued by Heyward’s story, but other commitments prevented him from tackling the subject until February 1934. “In the course of an intense correspondence, Heyward and Gershwin, with Ira contributing lyrics, shaped the stage version into a musical conception. In June, Gershwin visited Charleston, staying for several weeks in a cottage on Ferry Island to absorb the African-American ambience from which Heyward had drawn his locale and characters. Back in New York by July 21, he continued hasty composition as he fielded new commitments and began thinking ahead to production and cast. Todd Duncan and Anne Brown were signed for the title roles, with the erratic but brilliant John W. Bubbles tapped for the central part of Sportin’ Life. Composition was completed on August 23, 1935, and orchestration by September 2.” AMG Gershwin conceived Porgy and Bess as “an American folk opera.” WK It “featured an entire cast of classically trained African-American singers – a daring and visionary artistic choice at the time.” WK It was premiered in Boston on September 30, 1935 and “garnered enthusiastic notices and a 15-minute ovation, but also frightened its producers by playing over three hours” AMG Gershwin trimmed it for its October 10 opening at the Alvin Theatre in New York. AMG The shorter version “hovered between the grand opera Gershwin had conceived and an over-elaborate musical, provoking mixed critical responses. Worse, audiences thinned drastically after the opening, and the show, though it played for 124 performances, lost money.” AMG “Gershwin considered it his finest work,” WK but it wasn’t until 1976 when the Houston Grand Opera performed the complete score that it was “widely accepted in the United States as a legitimate opera.” WK Porgy and Bess is now “considered part of the standard operatic repertoire and is regularly performed internationally.” WK It has not, however, been without controversy as some have considered the opera to be racist. WK Summertime , which is sung at the opening by Clara to her baby, “is by far the best-known piece from the work.” WK With more than 17,500 versions of the song recorded, it it the most-performed cover song in popular music. WK Some of the most notable versions include recordings by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Janis Joplin with Big Brother & the Holding Company, and Billy Stewart, who had a top 10 pop and R&B hit with his version in 1966. Other highlights include “Bess, You Is My Woman Now, a duet between the two lovers; My Man’s Gone Now, sung by the widow of the murdered gambler; and I Got Plenty O’ Nuttin, Porgy’s joyful anthem to simplicity. The choral numbers are unfailingly appealing.” AMG Some of the more celebrated covers of songs from the opera include Sarah Vaughan’s It Ain’t Necessarily So and Nina Simone’s I Loves You Porgy, a #20 hit in 1959. Porgy and Bess received stage revivals in 1942, 1952, 1976, 1983, and 2006. A recording of some of the songs was released in 1940 which featured the original 1935 cast. A second volume was released in 1942 which featured the cast from the revival that same year. In 1957, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald recorded an album of some of the songs. Miles Davis did the same in 1958. Pearl Bailey, Harry Belafonte, Diahann Carroll, Ray Charles & Cleo Laine, Sammy Davis Jr. and Carmen McRae, and Percy Faith have also recorded the songs. A soundtrack of the movie version appeared in 1959. Over the years, there have also been full-fledged recordings of the complete opera, most notably back-to-back Grammy winners for Best Opera Recording with 1976’s Decca Records version featuring Willard White and Leona Mitchell and 1977’s RCA Victor recording with the Houston Grand Opera. In 1993, a television production of Porgy and Bess was nominated for four Emmy Awards.

Resources and Related Links: DMDB Encyclopedia entry for George Gershwin DMDB Encyclopedia entry for Ira Gershwin AMG All Music Guide review by Adrian Corleonis CA CastAlbums.org WK Wikipedia page for Porgy and Bess WC Wikipedia page for cast albums First posted 9/30/2011; last updated 1/29/2022.