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“Summertime” 最早是 George Gershwin 1930年给歌剧 Porgy and Bess 写的咏叹调, 歌词由 Porgy 的作者 DuBose Heyward 创作. 当时格什温正在尝试自己风格的 “African American folk music”. 这首歌根据乌克兰的一首摇篮曲 Oi Khodyt Son Kolo Vikon (A Dream Passes By The Windows) 改编, 之前在1929年格什温曾经在纽约听到 Oleksander Koshetz 的 Ukrainian National Chorus 演奏过.
歌曲后来迅速的流行起来并被广为翻唱, 据统计光录音版本就有 22700 多种. 它也是 Jazz standard, 被形容为 “without doubt… one of the finest songs the composer ever wrote….Gershwin’s highly evocative writing brilliantly mixes elements of jazz and the song styles of blacks in the southeast United States from the early twentieth century.”
Ella Fitzgerald 这个版本来自 1960年现场录音 Ella in Berlin, 她最好的现场之一. 高中听过这个版本之后至今没有发现更好的, 比她自己的录音室版本都好很多(当然也可能是先入为主). 其他牛逼翻唱包括 Billie Holiday(她第一个让这首歌进入排行榜 #12), Louis Armstrong, Gene Vincent, Sam Cooke 还有 Janis Joplin.
歌词,
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 goin’ to rise up singing
Then you’ll spread your wings
And you’ll take the sky
But till that morning
There’s a nothin’ can harm you
With daddy and mammy standin’ by, don’t you cry