Summertime (1934)

“Summertime”, reputed to be the most recorded jazz song in history, debuted as a lullaby sung by Abbie Mitchell in the opera Porgy and Bess. The opera was first performed in Boston in September 1935, and was favorably reviewed there, but was not well received when it opened in New York in October of that year. The show closed in December 1935 after it ran out of money, having completely depleted the initial $70,000 investment. A few days after it opened on Broadway with an all-black cast the Highlights from Porgy and Bess album was made using two white opera singers. The original cast did not record the music until 1940.
The opera generated racial controversy from the start. Many African-Americans thought the opera promoted racist stereotypes and some celebrated black artists refused to perform the work. Initially, jazz musicians seemed slow to adopt the music. They may have questioned whether a white composer and a white novelist could adequately portray the lives of poor blacks living in a Charleston ghetto. Billie Holiday was one of the first jazz musicians to record music from the opera. She and her orchestra recorded "Summertime" in July of 1936 and it rose to 12th place on the music charts that September. In 1939 a performance of “Summertime” by saxophonist Sidney Bechet was the first hit for the newly created Blue Note Records and helped establish the label. Over time other members of the jazz community did warm up to the music, as evidenced by a 1957 album recorded by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong singing and scatting songs from Porgy and Bess and the 1958 Miles Davis recording of the opera arranged for big band. “Summertime” appeared on the R&B and pop music chart in 1966 when Billy Stewart’s radical R&B interpretation of the song rose to 10th place.
Despite its lukewarm initial reception and the racial controversy that continues to be associated with the opera, Porgy and Bess has become the most performed American opera and is a standard of the repertoire. In 1959 it was adapted to film and won an Academy Award for Best Musical Score and a Golden Globe Award for Best Picture-Musical. In 2001 it was designated the official opera of the State of South Carolina. “Summertime” is considered its best known song. Currently there are over 2600 cover versions of “Summertime” and it has been included on the soundtracks of at least 15 films.