Summertime
by ChrisSeptember 10th, 2005 1:47 am
Most of us probably associate the song Summertime with a grainy recording played over a cheesy lemonade commercial, featuring a bucolic scene of some sloping Midwestern field, graced by a grand shade tree.
A lovely image to be sure, but things are not always as we would like them to be. Life is often more brutal than any of us would care to imagine. This is John Coltrane’s performance of Summertime, recorded in 1961 from his album My Favorite Things. Download or listen here. I don’t mean to imply that there is a lack of joy in this recording, only that I’m not feeling it now. I hear anger and I hear anguish, because that’s where my head is.
Summertime was never supposed to involve a few thousand dead, was it?
