Despite the fact that the lyrics to "Summertime" have little to do with summer in Southern California, I like to post the song during the summer to keep within seasonal guidelines. There's nothing really relatable to my personal experience. No cotton here, no rich daddies or good looking mamas, let alone jumping catfish. But, the one relatable line is "the living is easy" and in relation to that I mean moderate temperatures, windows open all day, barefoot, jackets in the closet until the end of October, that sort of shit. For Rick Nelson's version of the song though, I really don't need any reason aligned with the lyrics. It's stand alone good.
His version was released a few years into his career and I've yet to find the full credits for the band on it. Record sleeves didn't always list those sort of credits back then. There are a couple reasons why I've been looking for that info. One is that, having been released only a year after "Hello Marry Lou", it sounds as if he skipped at least a good five years ahead style-wise. "Hello Mary Lou" while not really rockabilly, still has an early rock 'n' roll thing going with James Burton's chicken pickin'. "Summertime" though sounds like something the Yardbirds would have done. Listen to it. The Yardbirds wouldn't exist until a year later. I don't know what it is that makes me think Yardbirds but some of it is whoever is playing harp. That and the bass riff. So, yeah, trying to find out who played what was an almost fruitless task. Then I came across a post at Cool Cat Wild, a blog I'd never run into. In the post, from 2011, the host mentions that Deep Purple's Roger Glover borrowed the bass riff for their "Black Night" in 1967, the Liverpool Five did as well for their "She's Mine" in 1966 and the Blues Magoos did too, in the same year, with "(We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet". The crazy thing is that the bass player on Nelson's "Summertime" was Joe Osborn (something Cool Cats Wild uncovered), who had played with Bob Luman and Dale Hawkins, two artists even further removed from the Yardbirds, let alone Deep Purple, the Liverpool Five and the Blues Magoos. This was supposed to be about Rick Nelson but I got sidetracked by a bass riff. There's a couple more Nelson cuts, you know, since we're all here. Luman and Hawkins will have to wait. I gotta fix dinner.
Ricky Nelson - Hello Mary Lou mp3 at Internet Archive
Ricky Nelson - Summertime mp3 at Internet Archive
Deep Purple - Black Night (streaming) at YouTube
Liverpool Five - She's Mine (streaming) at YouTube
Blues Magoos - (We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet (streaming) at YouTube
Ricky Nelson - Be Bop Baby mp3 at Internet Archive
Ricky Nelson - Lonesome Town mp3 at Internet Archive
3 comments:
Jeez... that's almost like a reverse mash-up!
Put on the Modern Lovers just now... And waddaya know; there's that bass line, on Astral Plane (right after Roadrunner).
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Excellent observation! That's one of the few bass lines I played over and over back when I played bass. You'd think I'd recognize it but I didn't! "Tonight I'm all alone, asleep in my room, I'll go insane, if I can't sleep with you or even be with you, gonna meet you on the astral plane" Hit it!!! I LOVE that first Modern Lovers LP!
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