Today, June 20, is officially the first day of summer, the longest day of the year (for us folks in the Northern Hemisphere), and the welcoming of our warmest weather season.
From the swaying Isley Brothers cover of Seals & Croft‘s “Summer Breeze” to DJ Jazzy Jeff & Fresh Prince‘s rap anthem “Summertime” to Sly & The Family Stone‘s warm, feel good “Hot Fun in the Summertime'” to the contemporary mellow moods of Childish Gambino‘s “Summertime Magic” (with over 156M Spotify spins), our list is packed with summer classics.
In the process we’ve also hopefully rediscovered some “shoulda-been” classics, like the mostly forgotten Nat King Cole standard ‘This Morning It Was Summer” (with arrangements by Nelson Riddle), the breezy Larry Graham album track “I’m So Glad It’s Summer Again” (trying to capture a little of the “Hot Fun In the Summertime” mood) and the driving ’60s Joe Simon track “Long Hot Summer.”
In that vein, we’ve included two sunny Marvelettes tunes “I Can’t Wait Til Summer Comes” (co-written by Gladys Knight) and “So Glad It’s Summertime” that both remained unreleased in the Motown vaults until a 2011 rerelease.
Finally, no soulful “summer” playlist would be complete without the haunting “Summertime” from Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess,one of the most recorded songs in history.
