"Summertime - A Young Mother's Transcendent Lullaby" by John Edward Hasse
© Introduction Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected, all rights reserved.
“More than 400 jazz cover versions of “Summertime” were recorded during the 1950s and 1960s. Among the best known are Miles Davis’s performance from his Porgy and Bess project with Gil Evans, but I must admit to disappointment that Davis, the consummate ballad player of his era, delivers the song in a perky, medium-tempo arrangement on this, his sole studio recording of the song, instead of returning to the hushed intimacy of Gershwin’s original conception. The only other jazz interpretation of “Summertime” from the period to match Davis’s in crossover appeal is Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald’s collaboration, recorded exactly one year earlier—and here these two artists, both known
to show more than a little irreverence in their interpretations, stick surprisingly close to the composer’s vision of a Catfish Row lullaby.
Later arrangements have been even more varied, and Gershwin’s song has been interpreted in every possible manner. No baby will be lulled to sleep by Albert Ayler’s sax shrieks and moans, which repeatedly move inside and outside of the chord changes and bend the notes until they are torn off the staff lines. Joshua Redman, supported by Brad Mehldau, has pushed “Summertime” ahead in a lopsided 5/4 time. Eddie Jefferson, for his part, gave us hip and ironic new lyrics—Your daddy is rich, your mamma don’t care, your sister’s got dough to go any ol’ where. And if you want to hear “Summertime” handled in whatever other manner—salsa, hip-hop, country-and-western, reggae, you name it—there is a recording out there for you waiting somewhere.”
Ted Gioia, The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire, 2nd ed.
With George Gershwin’s melancholy melody and DuBose Heyward’s colloquial poetry, the opening aria from ‘Porgy and Bess’ remains, 90 years after its premiere, among the most beloved songs in American music.
Mr. Hasse is curator emeritus of American music at the Smithsonian.
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Appeared in the December 6, 2025, print edition as ‘A Young Mother’s Transcendent Lullaby’.
“Ninety years ago this autumn, George Gershwin unveiled “Porgy and Bess” on Broadway—and confusion reigned. Was it an opera or a musical? A bold experiment or a misfire? Critics were split. Yet from that divided debut emerged one transcendent constant: a lullaby called “Summertime.” (The Metropolitan Opera’s current revival runs through Jan. 24, 2026.)
The song that opened the production soon escaped it, carried by voices from every corner of American music. Today it stands as one of the nation’s most recorded and beloved melodies.
The story began as a 1925 novel by DuBose Heyward, a Charleston, S.C., resident who sought to portray the daily lives of black South Carolinians along the city’s waterfront. DuBose and his wife, Dorothy, adapted his book into a successful 1927 Broadway play. Six years later, Gershwin persuaded Heyward to help him transform it into an opera—with Heyward writing the libretto and sharing lyric duties with George’s brother, Ira.
The unlikely collaboration fused two sensibilities: Gershwin, a Jewish New Yorker steeped in classical music, Broadway and jazz; and Heyward, a white Charleston poet shaped by the post-Civil War South. Their differences gave the work uncommon resonance.
When “Porgy and Bess” had its Broadway premiere on Oct. 10, 1935, it was praised for its musical ambition and all-black cast but also faulted—then as now—for perpetuating racial stereotypes. The debate has never quite faded, as the work earned recognition as America’s most enduring opera. “Porgy and Bess” lives on not only as a stage production but as a boundless source of songs that singers and jazz musicians have made their own.
The first aria Gershwin composed for the score was the slow, haunting “Summertime.” When the curtain rose on opening night, audiences heard it as the opera’s opening number: Clara, seated on a dock in Charleston, gently lulling her baby to sleep.
Here Gershwin set to music Heyward’s colloquial poetry—lines that Stephen Sondheim called among “the best lyrics written, I think, for the musical stage.” Heyward’s quatrains mingle hope and irony, serenity and unease. The poignancy lies not in the words themselves but in the world Clara inhabits. “Porgy and Bess” portrays a community economically pressed yet culturally vibrant, tested by daily strain and sustained by hope. For the residents of Catfish Row, “your daddy’s rich” sounds wishful, ironic. Yet “then you’ll spread your wings an’ you’ll take the sky” lifts the lullaby from want toward aspiration. Like “Hush, Little Baby,” with its gifts of a mockingbird and diamond ring, “Summertime” turns love into reassurance imagined.
Musically, “Summertime” is spare and unforgettable. The aria follows a 16-bar ABAC form, short and unhurried, as most lullabies are. Its melody moves mostly downward, reinforcing its mood of tender melancholy. And while Anglo-American lullabies are typically written in major keys, Gershwin chose a minor one—evoking the depth and dignity of such African-American spirituals as “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” Built on a pentatonic scale, “Summertime” gathers within its modest frame the sound world of black folk tradition.
Within a year of the premiere, Bob Crosby, Bing’s brother, adopted it as his band’s theme. Billie Holiday’s 1936 recording set the song on its path into the jazz canon—her smoky phrasing revealing new emotional colors. In 1939, Sidney Bechet recorded a dazzling, impassioned version on soprano saxophone.
By the 1940s, Duke Ellington’s orchestra was performing it regularly. Jazz musicians, more than any others, made “Summertime” their own: By the 1950s they had recorded more than 400 versions; by 2025, more than 2,200—making it the third-most-recorded song in jazz history.
Singers from Sarah Vaughan to Mahalia Jackson and Peggy Lee have drawn out its cradle-song calm, while such jazz instrumentalists as Stan Getz and John Coltrane have often quickened its pulse.
That adaptability is its genius. Born as an opera aria, it became a popular song, a jazz standard, and finally a cultural touchstone. Whole albums have been devoted to “Porgy and Bess” by such artists as Miles Davis, the Modern Jazz Quartet and Ella Fitzgerald with Louis Armstrong. Among the most haunting is Davis’s 1958 interpretation—his muted trumpet floating above Gil Evans’s translucent orchestration, every note a sigh. The Modern Jazz Quartet remade “Summertime” as elegant chamber music, weaving piano and vibraphone in transparent counterpoint.
Billy Stewart’s 1966 hit and Eddie Jefferson’s 1977 hip transformation pushed “Summertime” into new territory—the former jubilant and explosive, the latter sly and urbane. More recent interpreters underline the song’s vast reach, from Harolyn Blackwell’s operatic radiance and Norah Jones’s hushed Tanglewood version to Kenny Barron’s pensive piano meditation and Willie Nelson’s weathered country croon.
“Summertime” has endured because it holds emotional resonance for us all: Who cannot identify with comfort, hope and transcendence? For 90 years, this brief aria has bridged musical worlds—reminding us that even the humblest lullaby can rise and soar.”