I had been pondering whether to share another post before Sunday, and then an idea struck me. After I posted Tuesday Tunes 117: Hot Heat a couple of you mentioned in the comments another song you thought I might have played. In fairness, it was probably a better fit in terms of its subject matter than the songs I chose, but as it didn’t have the words hot or heat in its title I disqualified it. I also recalled having played it some time ago, and didn’t want to repeat myself – I do that often enough anyway. But it did get me thinking about the previous time I shared it, and having looked back at that post I thought it might be worth playing those songs again, in an edited version of that episode of Tuesday Tunes. So here we go.

The original post was in June last year, and this is what I said by way of introduction:

“For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere next Monday, 21 June, is the Summer Solstice – the day in the year with the most daylight hours. I wanted to mark it in some way in this series, but wasn’t sure whether to do it six days early or a day late. In the end, I decided on the traditional British spirit of compromise, even if our government appears to have forgotten what the word means, and am doing both. So for this week and next I’ll be sharing songs about summer and/or sunshine. As always, the links may be as tenuous as being a word in the title, but that’s the way I roll…”

There was only one place I could have started, really:

What can I say about this one? The basic facts are that it topped the UK charts for seven weeks in summer 1970, for six of which it kept Free’s All Right Now at #2. I loved that Free record – still do – and feel that it deserved at least a week at #1, but when you’re contending with a juggernaut like this one I guess you just have to take your place in the queue! This song captured the summer spirit around the world: it was #1 in eighteen countries, reached #3 in the US – the band’s only hit there – and has sold more than 30m copies. Not bad for a bit of jugband music that it is claimed took ten minutes to write. And for anyone who doesn’t know, the band’s name was inspired by the poem Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer, from T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. The lead singer and band leader, who wrote this song, is actually called Ray Dorset. They had a total of nine hit singles here, of which three others reached the top ten, including the follow up, Baby Jump, which also got to #1.

My second tune that week was much more recent:

Haim comprises three sisters, Este, Danielle and Alana Haim, and they were joined in that video by Henry Solomon on saxophone. It looks as though they had a lot of fun making that, but it is probably just as well the song isn’t any longer, for the sake of decorum! This was released in July 2019, and reached #27 on the Billboard rock chart, though it didn’t make the main US chart – or anywhere else, come to that. It was included on their third album, Women In Music Pt III, which was released in June 2020, reaching #13 in the US and #1 here in the UK. Their albums have all performed better in the UK charts than in their homeland: the two previous ones reached #1 and #2 here, #6 and #7 in the US. When the band made an early recording of the song they felt it sounded reminiscent of Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side, and added in a bass line to enhance the comparison: as a result, they gave Lou a songwriting co-credit. It’s a fun song, with a fun video to match.

Next up was a pop classic from The Sixties. This is the one which was suggested to me, and prompted this post. There is an unofficial video for this but, fearful of copyright issues, I thought I’d stick with the record company’s audio-only version:

That was released as a single by The Lovin’ Spoonful in July 1966, reaching #1 in the US and Canada, and #8 here in the UK. It was also included on the album Hums Of The Lovin’ Spoonful, which peaked at #14 in the US but didn’t chart here. As a depiction of the two sides of city life in summer heat it is perfect, in my view. I just wish I hadn’t always been so keen to get out of the city after work: it appears I may have been missing out…

As summer songs go, they don’t come much better than this classic:

All too short, like Eddie Cochran’s life, sadly. Released in 1958, that reached #8 in the US and #18 here. There have been many cover versions, notably by The Who, but I don’t think the original has ever been beaten. Its description of teenage angst and frustrations is superbly captured in such a succinct fashion. Cochran was only 21 when he was killed in a car crash in Wiltshire on his way back to London in April 1960, having just played in Bristol. He was already a star and could well have gone on to become huge, though his posthumous legacy has done well and he has taken his place as an icon of rock and roll history. There is a tragic irony in that the final single he released in the US when alive had just come out before the crash that took his life: it was Three Steps to Heaven. It wasn’t released here until the month after his passing – we took it to #1 in his honour.

I’ve seen references to an official video for the next tune but have been unable to find it – this claims to be an edited version ‘to avoid copyright’:

In case that doesn’t work for you, this is the official record company audio version.

The imagery of the song is a wonderful evocation of how love can pass on and how little things, like seeing girls in their summer clothes, can remind us of happier times: it is a collection of vignettes from life, very typical of Bruce Springsteen’s storytelling style of songwriting. This was a track on his album Magic, released in September 2007, which peaked at #1 in both the US and the UK, as well as elsewhere. It was released on iTunes as a digital single in January 2008, and reached #98 on the Billboard chart. It is one of my favourites of his – something about it just gets to me. I think that may be because the album was released around the time my marriage was ending, and I played it a lot once I was living on my own, with plenty of time to think!

That week’s final tune was another that, if you’re used to my musical tastes by now, would have come as no surprise to you:

This was the opening track on Don Henley’s second solo album, Building The Perfect Beast, which was released in November 1984, reaching #13 in the US and #14 here in the UK. The song was released as a single the previous month, and got to #5 in the US and #12 here. It resonated with me: I was born and brought up in coastal towns which depended on itinerant workers for summer holiday staffing, which is also what I had relied on for holiday jobs in my schooldays, some fifteen years earlier. We were always glad to see the back of them: coming down here, stealing our girls!

That was all for that week – just the six songs back in those days. As you may have noticed from the introductory paragraph to last year’s piece, I was planning that to be the first of two on the theme. That duly happened, and I thought it might be an idea to take this one up to what I now regard as my usual Tuesday complement of eight songs by adding in a couple of those I played then – yes, it’s alright, I do realise today is Thursday! This has always been a favourite of mine, from one of my favourite bands of all time:

That was the biggest UK hit of summer 1966, displacing The Beatles’ Paperback Writer from the top of the charts. It was their third (and last) UK chart topper, and was also #1 in Canada, Ireland and the Netherlands, and #2 in New Zealand. It reached #14 in the US, and apart from a couple of minor hits it was the start of a three year absence from the US charts. The band had a massive falling out during a live show in Cardiff, which resulted in drummer Mick Avory being briefly hospitalised, and US radio bosses decided not to play their records for fear of setting a bad example to their impressionable kids. What a bunch of wusses! Pete Quaife, the bass player, is missing from the video: he was recovering at the time from a car accident. Life with this lot was anything but dull! The album that included this song, Face To Face, reached #12 in the UK and #135 in the US.

This is the other one from last year, which has a really great summer feel to it:

That one dates back to 1985, when it was a top ten hit in both the UK and the US (#8 and #9 respectively). The band comprised members from both sides of the pond, and grew out of the foundations of an English covers band called Mama’s Cookin’, which had as its lead singer Katrina Leskanich, who is American. After this record they had moderate chart success for several years, until making a remarkable comeback by winning the 1997 Eurovision Song Contest for the UK with Love Shine A Light, which was a #3 hit here but didn’t chart in the US. Wisely, America decided to have nothing to do with Eurovision – I wish it didn’t still happen here, too, but at least it gives me a chance to explore the other channels while it is on.

Same old me, eh, finding something to have a go at: Eurovision, the UK government, some things don’t change, do they! But they are such easy targets, though it is harder to criticise our government at present, as it seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Just rampant inflation with food and fuel prices shooting through the roof, forecasts of many millions suffering fuel poverty this winter, extreme heat from climate change: nothing for a government to do, really. It’s OK, guys, you can follow the PM’s example and bugger off somewhere else.

Sorry about that. I don’t know what came over me: maybe I’m suffering from heatstroke! Whilst I have often revisited my back catalogue this is the first time I’ve done it for Tuesday Tunes. If you enjoy this, maybe I’ll try it again sometime for my midweek post: after all, there are a lot of them! I’ll see you again on Sunday, assuming I can think of a song for the brief! Until then, take care 😊