As we in the UK have been enjoying (enduring?) what passes for a heatwave here I thought I’d reflect that in my theme for this week. I have previously taken variations of summer, hot, sun, sunshine and the like as themes, and I’m playing a selection of them again. Most of these have been here before (more than once!), but that doesn’t stop them being good tunes, and a little bit of recycling never did anyone any harm, did it?

Let’s start with the obvious one, with a newer video than the one I have played before:

What can I say about In The Summertime? 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.

And here is another I’ve played before – in the same 2022 post, actually:

Walking On Sunshine, from Katrina and the Waves, 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. But if you were asked which of the two songs you remembered better it would be this one, right? And 86m YouTube views put that in perspective: the combined views of all of the variants of the other one don’t come remotely close to this.

I couldn’t mention our heatwave without playing this one, could I:

Martha Reeves wasn’t an original member of the Vandellas, but took over lead vocal duties in 1962, resulting in the group being renamed Martha And The Vandellas. Heatwave was released in July 1963 and was their first big hit, reaching #4 in the US, and #1 on their R&B chart. I was a little surprised to see that it didn’t make the UK charts, as the song is very familiar to me: their big breakthrough here came the following year with Dancing In The Street. This one was written by the famed Holland-Dozier-Holland team, and bears all of their hallmarks. It was the opening – and title – track of the group’s second album, which was released in September 1963 but wasn’t a huge seller, only getting to #125 in the US.

This next one is another obvious choice, but not this version. One of my favourite covers bands took it on a few months back, and did their usual excellent job with it:

The original version of Summer Of ’69 was, of course, by Bryan Adams. It was first released on his album Reckless, which came out in November 1984 and reached #1 in both the US and his native Canada, and got to #7 in the UK. It then became a single in June 1985, peaking at #5 in the US, #11 in Canada, but only #42 in the UK – I guess we all had the album by then. As for First To Eleven, I have played them several times before and never pass up the chance to do so again. They come from Erie, Pennsylvania, and are very prolific, posting a new video at least once a week. They are hugely popular on YouTube, with more than 1.96m subscribers, and I think you can see why from this video: they are just so very good.

Another obvious one to close with – there are so many, and I’ve played most of them before, including this one:

Good Day Sunshine was released in August 1966 as a track on The Beatles’ seventh album, Revolver. This was a good time for a new album, as England won the World Cup the previous weekend, and this kind of became the soundtrack for a joyous summer here. It has sold well over 7m copies worldwide in various forms, 5m of those in the US, and on original release reached #1 in the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, Finland, Sweden and, showing that there was no lingering resentment over that Russian linesman, in what was then still West Germany, though some of them still bang on about it now!

That’s all for today. In playing these I have reminded myself of many other songs for the theme – some of which I have played before, others not – so I may well give you another set of these, if the weather holds and they are still topical! Enjoy your week, and I’ll see you again soon 🔥🌞