Summer Breeze

June 21, 2010 12:31 PM

In honor of the first day of summer, one of the most covered "summer" songs of all time - "Summer Breeze." The original - Seals & Crofts. Inside for more:

The Isley Brothers
Type O Negative
George Benson & Al Jarreau
Tommy Shaw & Jack Blades
Main Ingredient
Jason Mraz
Peter Bjorn and John
Bob Baldwin w/Marian Meadows
Ray Conniff & the Singers
Ramsey Lewis
Jackie Mittoo

posted by waitingtoderail (50 comments total)

DJ Aphrodite
posted by soundofsuburbia at 12:40 PM on June 21, 2010

I have no idea why, but the Seals & Croft original always scared me. Does it use minor chords or something?
posted by punkfloyd at 12:41 PM on June 21, 2010

Seals & Crofts wrote it, The Isley Brothers own it.
posted by grabbingsand at 12:42 PM on June 21, 2010 [3 favorites]

The record that the Isley Brothers version is on, 3 + 3, is one of the best summer records ever. Do yourself the favor.

Great post!
posted by dirtdirt at 12:43 PM on June 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

The best summer song is Summer Song by Slade.

(I can dig George Benson sometimes, but Summer Breeze?! Ew.)
posted by mrgrimm at 12:43 PM on June 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Maybe it's because you associate it with the dentist's office, punkfloyd. I know I do.
posted by JoanArkham at 12:44 PM on June 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

I have no idea why, but the Seals & Croft original always scared me. Does it use minor chords or something?

No, it's just eye-gougingly awful.
posted by mrgrimm at 12:44 PM on June 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

The only Seals I'm in favor of clubbing.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 12:45 PM on June 21, 2010 [4 favorites]

Hot Fun in the Summertime
posted by xod at 12:52 PM on June 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

For my taste, Down Home was the pinnacle. I was a huge fan, based on this album.

Summer Breeze came out, and contained these lyrics:

And I come home from a hard day's work,
and you're waiting there, not a care in the world.
See the smile a-waitin' in the kitchen,
food cookin' and the plates for two.

This hinted at a somewhat limited world view, specifically a limited view of the place of women in the world. Even back then in the '70's this verse clanged.

Then Diamond Girl came out and it was all over. Irretrievably down the path to Blech. To think so highly of an artist or group based on early work, then to watch them go in a direction that makes you hide whatever stuff of theirs you have. That, my friends, is a bummer.
posted by Danf at 1:05 PM on June 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

posted by punkfloyd I have no idea why, but the Seals & Croft original always scared me. Does it use minor chords or something?

No, it's just the jasmine in your mind.
posted by mattdidthat at 1:07 PM on June 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Under the Boardwalk
posted by IndigoJones at 1:21 PM on June 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'll be honest, I had no idea this was one of the most covered "summer" songs of all time.
posted by tommasz at 1:27 PM on June 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

And I come home from a hard day's work,
and you're waiting there, not a care in the world.
See the smile a-waitin' in the kitchen,
food cookin' and the plates for two.

This hinted at a somewhat limited world view, specifically a limited view of the place of women in the world. Even back then in the '70's this verse clanged.

In the context of the the 19-"Havin'-My-Baby"-"I've Never Been To Me"-70's, this barely rates. If you want to get po-mo, there is nothing in the song that indicates that the singer is a man or that the person referred to here is a woman. I live with a woman and I work from home, while she works outside of the house. It is not unusual that I prepare a meal. Does this make me limited?

I am ricochet biscuit, hear me roar.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:38 PM on June 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

This summer song has it beat for covers.
posted by rocket88 at 1:39 PM on June 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

This hinted at a somewhat limited world view

The song would be so much better if they both worked at equal-paying jobs, then came home to pop a Xanax and heat their TV dinners?
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 2:02 PM on June 21, 2010 [3 favorites]

While the solstices and equinoxes have precise astronomical definitions, the seasons do not.

Perhaps I'm pedantic and irritable today, because here in Seattle I still have the furnace running!
posted by Tube at 2:03 PM on June 21, 2010

This hinted at a somewhat limited world view

The only gender reference in the song is associated with the month of July ("July is dressed up and playing her tune"). Maybe that's not how they intended it when they wrote it, but that smiling-and-cooking reference could be to any of the genders, or it could even be (heaven forbid) a same-gendered couple.
posted by blucevalo at 2:26 PM on June 21, 2010

in honor of gay pride week which begins friday (june 25), i'm coming out. not as queer, but as having had possibly the gayest first concert experience ever: seals & crofts with america, miami university, 1974.

<hangs head in shame>

so, yes. this song does make me weep.
posted by msconduct at 2:27 PM on June 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

I just breezed through it all and like Main Ingredient's cover best. The Isley Brothers version has its moments in the beginning but too electric-grungy later on. Most of the rest are various genre re-interpretations. Ray Conniff & the Singers has the best video.
posted by stbalbach at 2:46 PM on June 21, 2010

I live with a woman and I work from home, while she works outside of the house. It is not unusual that I prepare a meal. Does this make me limited?

Point condeded. But you will still only be able to pry my hatred of this song from my cold, dead mind.

Um, wait. . .
posted by Danf at 2:55 PM on June 21, 2010

Summertime!
Friends of Dean Martin!
Booker T and the MGs!
posted by squalor at 3:04 PM on June 21, 2010

Cruel Summer
posted by xod at 3:10 PM on June 21, 2010

Christ. I hadn't seen Al Jarreau since about 1985. He starting to look like Red Foxx. "I'm coming, Elizabeth, I'm coming."
posted by pracowity at 3:11 PM on June 21, 2010

I recently discovered the Main Ingredient's version, and yeah, it might be my new favorite. But I loved all of these. (Fun fact: the Main Ingredient's lead singer was Cuba Gooding... Sr.)

Summer Breeze?! Ew.

it's just eye-gougingly awful.

Hey, mrgrimm, you know what this is?
(holds up seven fingers)
It's a week's supply of these
(holds up one)
posted by evilcolonel at 3:19 PM on June 21, 2010

When I was a kid, I thought "Hot Fun In the Summertime," included the lyrics, "Commie Bear in the country sun." But, in college, I was mocked for that. I played along like I was joking about those lyrics. So then, I assumed it must be "Connie, there, in the country sun." But I finally Googled just now - "County fair in the country sun."

(Thank you for listening. Now back to more of Sandra Tsing Loh's...)
posted by Kloryne at 3:28 PM on June 21, 2010

Summer Breeze came up on random the other day and my dad asked me why I was listening to it and he said it scared him because that was his class song when he graduated back in 1977 and he hadn't heard the song since then.
posted by lilkeith07 at 3:33 PM on June 21, 2010

Pavement - Summer Babe
Jane's Addiction - Summertime Rolls
The Lovin' Spoonful - Summer in the City

Somebody already got Sly.
posted by mrgrimm at 4:16 PM on June 21, 2010

Johnny Rivers Summer Rain
posted by grounded at 4:23 PM on June 21, 2010

Okay -- I am definitely smack in the midst of the "Free To Be You And Me" demographic. But -- I do definitely love this song, and the "I come home and you're waiting there not a care in the world" lyric didn't bother me in the slightest.

Because this lyric also spoke, to me, of the "back-to-the-land" sort of post-hippie grow-your-own-food demographic that also was floating around in the 70's, which ALSO appealed to me. I grew up wanting to live a life where I wrote or acted or did work sometimes, but also baked my own bread and grew my own tomatoes and made my own cheese other times. I still want that; I still want the kind of relationship where we've both had a hard day doing whatever -- either in the home or out -- but at the end of the brings the simple pleasure of coming home to someone else there and and a glass of wine and the arms that reach out to hold me in the evening when the day is through.

*gets a wistful look for a minute, then snaps out of it*

As for other summer songs -- I just made a whole mix tape of these for my own amusement; someone else has hit the obvious Bananarama and "Under The Boardwalk" references, so here's a few more summer hits I hit:

The original Martha and the Vandellas Dancin' In The Street
Mungo Jerry, In The Summertime
Dave Matthews Band, Stay (Wasting Time) (okay, not TECHNICALLY summer, but you listen to the words and tell me this doesn't feel like summer).
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:55 PM on June 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

It may be the most covered song about summer, but the most sampled Seals & Croft song is deservedly this little number.
posted by saladin at 5:02 PM on June 21, 2010

Does it use minor chords or something?

Seals and Croft were folkies and they often used funny tunings and modal constructions. Plus, it always sounded to me like even when they weren't doing that, that they were playing down, or not playing the thirds in their chords which, by definition, makes things ambiguous in the minor/major dept.

I don't know how "good" they were, but they were fairly sophisticated.
posted by Trochanter at 5:48 PM on June 21, 2010

Crofts, though.
posted by Trochanter at 5:50 PM on June 21, 2010

Beach Boys (entire catalog).

Around the time I was figuring out that Brian Wilson was a genius and that the Beach Boys' music was not silly or simple at all, I also realized this:

It's true their music is not surf music, because Brian didn't surf. What it is is sun music. Listening to the Beach Boys feels like being in the sun. You think about the Beach Boys and you don't even think there is a bass in there, but there most assuredly is, and it's so warm. Add in the high harmonies and you have summer in musical form.
posted by drjimmy11 at 6:20 PM on June 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Does it use minor chords or something?

Yes. In both verse and chorus.

Seals and Crofts were actually very savvy popmeisters. Even if that era's pop isn't your thing, the craft is impressive. They also sound a lot like that other 70s duo England Dan and John Ford Coley because 'England' Dan Seal's brother was the Seals of S & C. Their voices were quite similar.
posted by grounded at 6:31 PM on June 21, 2010

There ain't no cure for the summertime blues!

I can't believe no one linked this before me.
posted by Daddy-O at 6:37 PM on June 21, 2010

I feel sorry for the bass player in that Seals and Crofts video. He's on screen for a few frames at the very beginning and that's it. It's kinda like, "hey, Mr. Camera operator genius, there are more than two people performing here."
posted by Rhomboid at 7:08 PM on June 21, 2010

For those down on Seals and Crofts, you may not be aware of perhaps their most brilliant and musically sophisticated song, "Hummingbird" [track] (or just the two of them) . If you can get past the Baha'i references, it has some strong songwriting craft: a rather long and building intro which then soars as it modulates up a half step, with a a killer bass track, a first-rate structure, and a wonderful coda ("dont' fly away") which starts by building harmonically first on a pedal tone as the chords swirl around it, to a new modulation (fading on the I - IV chords_. From a musical theory and harmonic standpoint, it works beautifully. Besides it's just really pretty, with great duo vocals, state-of-the-art 70s production (by Louis Shelton), and it is indicative of some of the better pop writing of the era.
posted by Seekerofsplendor at 7:22 PM on June 21, 2010

Beach Baby
posted by Crabby Appleton at 7:49 PM on June 21, 2010

"Low" by Flo Rida was good goofy summer fun.
posted by Trochanter at 8:02 PM on June 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

In reading this post, I briefly had this song confused with "Summer Wind," which Martin Prince sings - naked, alone, and wistful - at the end of a Simpsons episode.
posted by ErikaB at 8:17 PM on June 21, 2010

Hey, it's one of the few hit songs that features a toy piano (as heard on the studio version here), so I get a kick out of it for that reason alone.

On "Summer Breeze" I went down to Toys-R-Us and bought a little toy piano, which is one of the sounds on that record playing that lick. Along with the traditional good sounds of the rhythm section, we were always trying to come up with a different texture, whether it was a combination of horns or a great string arrangement and all that. We were always looking for something that would set it apart.

posted by maudlin at 8:50 PM on June 21, 2010

"That Summer Feeling" [Channel O, Australia, 1980]
"That Summer Feeling" [Jonathan Richman, 1984]
"Ice Cream Man" [Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, live in Leeds, 1978]
posted by koeselitz at 2:20 AM on June 22, 2010 [1 favorite]

Kool & The Gang - Summer Madness
posted by pracowity at 2:29 AM on June 22, 2010 [1 favorite]

No Brady Bunch?

(Admittedly, I had this LP. Had.)
posted by dgbellak at 2:39 AM on June 22, 2010

Hey maudlin, if you like toy instruments in music you should check out Jai Agnish.
posted by waitingtoderail at 4:34 AM on June 22, 2010

Argh. It was there, I swear! It exists!
posted by dgbellak at 5:27 AM on June 22, 2010

Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood - Summer Wine
posted by xod at 8:37 AM on June 22, 2010

Janis Joplin - Summertime
posted by xod at 8:43 AM on June 22, 2010

Yes, "Summer Madness" all the way. And maybe "Hot Child in the City". And tons of the Spinanes, particularly Manos and "Lines and Lines" which includes the following:

listen closely for tires in the driveway
feel the warming come up through the floor
the click as the tape flips, it's intrinsic how he feels sick...
feel the stick of legs leaving vinyl

the sweat of closeness, the waves of nausea
posted by ifjuly at 11:13 PM on June 22, 2010