July 13, 2023: AmericanStudying Summer Jams: Summertime

[Now that we’re really in the dog days of summer, a series on AmericanStudies contexts for some of our most enduring summertime songs. Add your responses or other summertime favorites for a crowd-sourced weekend bbq—I mean, post. Okay, both!]

On two distinct but equally significant ways to AmericanStudy the Fresh Prince.

He had had his famous failures, but by the time Will Smith released 1991’s “Summertime” (under his rap name the Fresh Prince, and in conjunction with his partner and co-writer DJ Jazzy Jeff), the multi-talented artist was back on his path toward world (or at least cultural) domination. He had just completed the first season of his TV show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which would over its six seasons become one of the decade’s most popular sitcoms; he was only two years out from his acclaimed film debut in Six Degrees of Separation (1993), and only a handful from his first mega-hits, Bad Boys (1995) and Independence Day (1996); and “Summertime” itself became one of his first huge hits, reaching #4 on Billboard’s singles chart and #1 on the R&B/Hip Hop chart. It wasn’t quite the Willenium yet in 1991, but the occasion was at least approaching.

I’m not sure if it’s possible to argue with Smith’s uniquely successful presence in 1990s American culture (has any other artist had simultaneous hits in TV, film, and music?), but how we AmericanStudy that presence, well, that’s a more complex and open-ended question. On the one hand, I think it’s possible to see Smith’s rap career, and more specifically a song like “Summertime,” as a crucial stage in the genre’s evolution from something locally and culturally grounded (in urban, African American communities and experiences) to something more mainstream and marketable (more, you could say, Bel-Air). “Summertime” even opens with lyrics that explicitly contrast its vibe and identity with other contemporary songs: “Here it is the groove slightly transformed/Just a bit of a break from the norm/Just a little something to break the monotony/Of all that hardcore dance that has gotten to be/A little bit out of control.” Seen in this light, the song’s sample of (and closing allusion to) Kool and the Gang’s “Summer Madness” (1974) indicates that it is a “new definition” (as that closing lyric puts it) of such musical and cultural traditions.

On the other hand, this reading of Smith’s music and/or persona would seem to me problematic in precisely the same ways as were critiques of The Cosby Show for being insufficiently representative of particular versions of the African American experience. That is, Will Smith’s raps were no less (and no more) “representative” than Tupac Shakur’s, and vice versa—each are first and foremost the expression of a particular artist and voice, but each can also connect to multiple possible communities and experiences, and thus communicate those to their audiences. Seen in that light, “Summertime” can be read as a profoundly intertextual conversation with tradition, one that opens with a verse that entreats its audience to “think of the summers of the past” and then alludes in each of the next two verses to “Summer Madness,” that source of its musical sample. Whether that tradition is specifically African American or broadly American (or simply human) depends in part of the listener’s own identity and perspective, and of course the different possibilities are far from mutually exclusive. Indeed, they’re all part of that complex cultural entity that was and is the Fresh Prince.

Last summer jam tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Thoughts on this song? Other summertime favorites you’d share?

July 12, 2023: AmericanStudying Summer Jams: Summer in the City

[Now that we’re really in the dog days of summer, a series on AmericanStudies contexts for some of our most enduring summertime songs. Add your responses or other summertime favorites for a crowd-sourced weekend bbq—I mean, post. Okay, both!]

On whether all art is political, and why the question matters more than the answer.

In the summer of 1966, The Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City” became a mega-hit, staying at #1 on the Billboard singles chart for three consecutive August weeks. The song’s famous bridge, which features a series of car horns and ends with a jackhammer, is only the most overt of the many ways in which the song perfectly captures its title subject, especially for young city dwellers (like the Spoonful themselves): the contrast between sweltering days and cool (figuratively if not literally) nights; the way in which the former seem to move so slowly when all you want is to get to the thrills of the latter; the grit and sweat that cake necks and sidewalks, bodies and spirits, making all feel nearly dead yet also somehow more alive at the same time. Given how many of those young record buyers lived in cities like New York and Los Angeles, it’s no surprise that “Summer in the City” became one of the season’s and year’s biggest successes.

Of course, the summer of the song’s release also featured “hot towns” that had nothing to do with the thermometer: 1966 was the third of what would turn out to be five consecutive years of “Long Hot Summer,” periods of urban unrest and riots connected to the decade’s simmering racial, cultural, and social tensions, activisms, and conflicts. Indeed, oe of the first such conflicts had erupted in the Spoonful’s own New York City two years earlier, following the July 1964 shooting of a Harlem youth by a white police officer; by 1966 few major urban areas had been left unaffected. It’s difficult to imagine, from my admitted temporal distance, any 1966 city dweller thinking of summer in the city without connecting it to these seasons and years of strife; given early rock and roll’s combination of racial interrelationships and social radicalism, it’s even more difficult to think about a rock group penning such a song without having the long hot summer in mind. But on the other hand, there is absolutely no evidence in the lyrics for “Summer in the City” (nor in the band’s smiling performance captured at the first link above) that it had such less cheery contexts.

By a certain line of critical reasoning, all art is political precisely because it has such contexts, whether it overtly engages with them or not (and indeed, by a certain line of reasoning the failure to engage is itself a political act, even in the most pop of popular culture). But to my mind, the goal shouldn’t be to figure out whether to implicate a song like “Summer in the City” in its political and historical contexts, or even how to read the song in light of them—the goal, and I would say it represents a central AmericanStudies project, should be to think about both The Lovin’ Spoonful and the Long Hot Summer as part of American culture in the summer of 1966 (along with, for example, the iconic surfing film The Endless Summer). There would be all sorts of ways to think about the combination of these different moments and texts, events and voices, but the vital first step is simply to recognize their co-existence, the way in which any American summer—every American season—is comprised out of all of them.

Next summer jam tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Thoughts on this song? Other summertime favorites you’d share?

July 11, 2023: AmericanStudying Summer Jams: Summertime Blues

[Now that we’re really in the dog days of summer, a series on AmericanStudies contexts for some of our most enduring summertime songs. Add your responses or other summertime favorites for a crowd-sourced weekend bbq—I mean, post. Okay, both!]

On what a summer classic reveals about the voices of youth.

I listened to a lot of early rock and roll growing up (something about having a couple baby boomers for parents during the era that first defined the concept of “classic rock” and produced countless “Best of the 1950s” type collections, I suppose), and few songs stood out to me more than Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” (1958). I don’t know that any single song better expresses the clash of youthful dreams and adult realities on which so much of rock and roll and popular music more generally have been built, and I definitely believe that Cochran and his co-writer (and manager) Jerry Capeheart hit upon the perfect way to literally give voice to those dueling perspectives: in the repeated device through which the speaker’s teenage desires are responded to and shot down by the deep voices of authority figures, from his boss to his father to his senator.

Coincidentally, Cochran himself died very young, at the age of 21, in an April 1960 car accident while on tour in England. Cochran’s death came just over a year after the tragic plane crash that took the lives of three other prominent young rock and rollers, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper. There’s obviously no direct relationship between these two accidents, nor would I argue that these artists’ youthful deaths were the cause of their popularity (all four were already popular prior to the accidents). But on the other hand, I think there’s something iconic, mythic even, about rock and rollers dying young—or about, more exactly, our narratives and images of such figures—and I believe it’d be difficult to separate those myths from the idealistic and anti-authoritarian attitudes captured in Cochran’s biggest hit. That is, it feels throughout “Summertime Blues” as if the speaker’s youthful enthusiasm is consistently being destroyed by those cold adult responses—and melodramatic as it might sound, the loss of childhood dreams can certainly be allegorized through the deaths of the kinds of pop icons who so often symbolize youth.

Yet of course most young people continue to live in, and thus impact, the world far after their youthful dreams have ended (“Life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone,” to quote another youthful anthem), and in a subtle, unexpected way Cochran’s song  reflects that human and historical reality as well. When Cochran’s speaker tries to take his problem to more official authorities, he is rejected by his senator for a political reason: “I’d like to help you, son, but you’re too young to vote” is the reply. In 1958, when “Summertime Blues” was released, the national legal voting age was 21, and so the 20 year old Cochran could not vote; but over the next decade a potent social and legal movement to lower the voting age would emerge, in conjunction with the decade’s many other youth and activist movements, and in 1971 Congress passed and the states ratified the 26^th Amendment, which did indeed lower the eligible age for voting to 18. Being able to vote certainly doesn’t eliminate all the other problems of teenage life and its conflicts with adult authority—but it does remind us that neither the gap nor the border between youth and adulthood are quite as fixed or as absolute as our myths might suggest.

Next summer jam tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Thoughts on this song? Other summertime favorites you’d share?

July 10, 2023: AmericanStudying Summer Jams: Summer Wind

[Now that we’re really in the dog days of summer, a series on AmericanStudies contexts for some of our most enduring summertime songs. Add your responses or other summertime favorites for a crowd-sourced weekend bbq—I mean, post. Okay, both!]

On performance, authorship, and collective memory.

Frank Sinatra’s “Summer Wind” (1966) was far from Old Blue Eyes’ most successful song, but the nostalgic ballad of summer love lost was certainly a hit, rising to #25 on the Billboard singles chart and #1 on the Easy Listening chart, and helping to make its album, Strangers in the Night, one of the most successful of Sinatra’s long career. Yet Sinatra’s “Summer Wind” was not only not the first recorded version of the song, but it was released less than a year after that first version, Wayne Newton’s, which itself had reached #78 on the Billboard singles chart and #9 on the Adult Contemporary chart in 1965. And less than a year after Sinatra’s, Welsh star (and James Bond title track titan) Shirley Bassey released her own version of the song! Such was the culture of popular music in the 1960s.

Newton, Sinatra, and Bassey were able to record and release their own verisons of “Summer Wind” in large part because the song had been composed by none of them, and instead by an outside songwriting duo: the music was by Heinz Meier and the lyrics by legendary songwriter Johnny Mercer.  For more than 40 years, from his earliest songs as a twenty-something in the early 1930s to just before his 1976 death, Mercer composed the lyrics (and occasionally also the music) to some of the 20^th century’s best-known works: from “P.S. I Love You” (1934) and “Jeepers Creepers” (1938) to “Moon River” (1961) and “Days of Wine and Roses” (1962), along with more than 1400 others. So there’s no possible way to see Mercer’s career as anything less than a triumphant success; yet Mercer was also a singer in his own right, and it’s fair to ask whether it might have been difficult to see other performers gain fame from his compositions—which might explain why Mercer released his own version of “Summer Wind” (1974), just two years before his death.

Whatever Mercer’s own perspective, the question is an important one for any student of popular music and culture. Does it matter that most of Frank Sinatra’s hits were written by other songwriters? Does it matter that many of Elvis Presley’s were? When we remember these hugely influential and transformative artists, are we simply remembering their talent and presence, irrespective of these questions of authorship? (With Elvis there are of course related but distinct questions of race that these issues also raise.) These are complex questions, and I’m certainly not suggesting that we should not remember Sinatra or Presley (although it’d be possible to argue that the difference between Sinatra and Wayne Newton, for example, was at least partly one of access to better songs). But I would strongly suggest that our collective cultural memories need to include songwriters like Mercer far more fully than they do, and indeed that it is such songwriters whose works and voices can often truly capture the arc of American popular culture.

Next summer jam tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Thoughts on this song? Other summertime favorites you’d share?

July 8-9, 2023: Patriotism in 2023: Talking Of Thee I Sing

[It’s been two and a half years since my book on the contested history of American patriotism was published, and let’s just say it doesn’t feel less relevant at the moment. So for this year’s July 4^th series, I wanted to highlight a handful of places and ways I’ve been thinking about the book and patriotism here in 2023. Leading up to this special request for any and all further such opportunities to share the project!]

I hope this week’s series has illustrated the continuing, crucial relevance of Of Thee I Sing and the contested history of American patriotism. I’m always a big fan of talking about my projects and ideas, but in this case I genuinely believe that our future depends on these conversations, and that I have a small but real role to play in helping us have them. I’ll keep looking for such opportunities of course, but I’d really love to hear from you all with ideas as well, and I am quite literally open to everything: from the more familiar (libraries, museums, historic sites) and the educational (classes/students/institutions of all kinds) to what might seem like a longer shot but I promise is of interest as well (book/discussion groups of all types, for example). Got an idea for a place/community/conversation where we could talk about Of Thee I Sing and the contested history and contemporary relevance of American patriotism? You know what to do!

Summertime series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Ideas for places/ways I could share Of Thee I Sing?

July 7, 2023: Patriotism in 2023: “Patriotic Education”

[It’s been two and a half years since my book on the contested history of American patriotism was published, and let’s just say it doesn’t feel less relevant at the moment. So for this year’s July 4^th series, I wanted to highlight a handful of places and ways I’ve been thinking about the book and patriotism here in 2023. Leading up to a request for any and all further such opportunities to share the project!]

In my main book talk for Of Thee I Sing, I start with two January 2021 events that together reflect the contemporary relevance of debates over American patriotism. One is obvious, and was the subject of another Saturday Evening Post Considering History column inspired by the book’s ideas as well as the one-year anniversary of that insurrection. But I would argue that another January 2021 event foreshadowed just as fully what has happened over the two and a half years since: the release (on MLK Day, no freaking less) of the Trump administration’s 1776 Commission report. I’m sure there had been other right-wing voices calling for a return to “patriotic education” before that document made its vision of that concept a centerpiece; but it’s far from coincidental that the 2.5 years since the report have been dominated by state laws and other efforts to reshape American education (or rather, attack American education) under the aegis of that “patriotic education” frame. One of the main ideas of my own project is that for far too long and much too fully we have ceded definitions of American patriotism over to the particular version that I call mythic patriotism, the propagandistic, exclusionary, often overtly white supremacist form that is clearly driving these extremist educational efforts. To challenge them, we have to be aware of the long histories of both this particular vision and of debates and alternatives—so, as I’ll say again this week, let’s keep talking about them!

Special request this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Ideas for places/ways I could share Of Thee I Sing?

July 6, 2023: Patriotism in 2023: Critical Patriotism and the Court

[It’s been two and a half years since my book on the contested history of American patriotism was published, and let’s just say it doesn’t feel less relevant at the moment. So for this year’s July 4^th series, I wanted to highlight a handful of places and ways I’ve been thinking about the book and patriotism here in 2023. Leading up to a request for any and all further such opportunities to share the project!]

One of the very best parts about teaching adult learning courses is that the students feel very free to continue the conversation by email after the class is officially done (often years down the road, in fact, which are some of my favorite emails to receive). As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, that happened again with this Spring’s BOLLI course on patriotism, and with a particularly thoughtful and helpful idea at that. The student (whom I won’t name as I haven’t gotten her permission, but she was a great contributor throughout the course) shared a New York Times article entitled “Supreme Court Justices Don’t Like Being Criticized in Public, Which is a Good Reason to Keep Doing It,” calling it “a beautiful illustration of critical patriotism at its best.” As someone who has directly criticized a Supreme Court Justice in order to advance my ideas about the worst and best of American ideals, I wholeheartedly agree; but until she shared the article and this perspective I really hadn’t thought of that practice as an embodiment of critical patriotism. I’m definitely convinced, however, and this additional and important application of our class conversations really drove home how much Of Thee I Sing can help us analyze in our contemporary politics, debates, and culture.

Last patriotic post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Ideas for places/ways I could share Of Thee I Sing?