Happy FIRST DAY OF SUMMER! 🙂 ❤

In high school, when I took guitar lessons, one of the first songs my guitar instructor taught me was the song “Summertime.” The sheet music for the song was hand written. (My guitar instructor was a fantastic player, so I am guessing he wrote the guitar music for this song on his own.) Because I played off of hand-written sheet music, I did not know anything about this song when I was learning it. The title “Summertime” was written at the top, but no other information about the song was there. All I knew was that I had never heard the song that I was learning.

Since today is the first day of summer, I wanted to write about a summer song, and since the song “Summertime” was on my mind, I searched for it, so I could finally hear a recording of the first song I learned in guitar lessons. I was not sure if it would be easy to find the song because I was not sure how many other songs shared the same title. Luckily, on the first try, I found “Summertime” as performed by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. I heard the song start with Louis Armstrong’s trumpet playing the introduction to the song that I remember having so much fun playing on my guitar. I was blown away by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald’s performance of the song.

Composer: George Gershwin  Lyrics: DuBose Heyward

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 mornings you’re gonna rise up singing
And you’ll spread your wings and you’ll take to the sky
But till that morning, there ain’t nothin’ can harm you
With daddy and mammy standin’ by
One of these mornings you’re gonna rise up singing
And you’ll spread your wings and you’ll take to the sky
But till that morning, there ain’t nothin’ can harm you
With daddy and mammy standin’ by
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.

What a BEAUTIFUL song! I felt both sadness and hope as I listened to Armstrong and Fitzgerald sing the powerful lyrics. This version of the song is way more moving than when I played it on the guitar. 😉

I am glad that I finally listened to the song that I had learned how to play years ago. 🙂

Happy Summer!