Summer's here, time is right — for music

“Under the Boardwalk,” The Drifters (1964)
“Under the Boardwalk” is one of the great productions of all time, wherein Bert Berns balanced a bewildering array of Latin-esque percussion — including castanets, a ratchet and a triangle — strings, a loping bass line and Johnny Moore’s career-topping vocal.

Besides the amazing arrangement, Berns was also able to capture an emotional moment. Lead singer Rudy Lewis had been found dead of a drug overdose in his hotel room the night before, and it was too late to cancel the session. There wasn’t even time to transpose the song into a more suitable key for Moore, but Berns was able to channel Moore’s emotion from shock and grief into blissful relief, perfectly coinciding with the theme of the song: escaping exposure to the punishing heat of the summer sun, to the shaded subterranean cool under the boardwalk.

“Brown Eyed Girl,” Van Morrison (1967)
Berns also produced the sublime “Brown-Eyed Girl,” wherein Morrison’s perpetual cloudy countenance was replaced with a sunny grin. You can literally hear Van the Man smile as he breezes through honeyed memories of a summer love gone by. After a great bass and guitar intro, Morrison’s wistful reflection has real meat: we can see and feel the scenes of verdant hollows, misty mornings, waterfalls and the greenest of grass behind the stadium. The little touches are everything: a comforting organ enters for the second verse, hand claps bolster the third, and the bridge turns the bass and guitar intro inside out to neatly convey the passage of time. Most important, Van has never again sounded so at home in his skin.

“Hot Fun in the Summertime,” Sly and the Family Stone (1969)
Sly and his multifarious Family Stone embodied the promise and ultimate collapse of the '60s dream of peace, love and understanding transcending all social and cultural barriers. Their potent musical stew blended funk, soul, doo wop and rock, and when Sly cried out “I Want To Take You Higher” at the end of the band’s set at Woodstock in the summer of '69, many feel the festival — and an era — reached its zenith. At that very moment, Sly’s wistful, sultry ode to an earlier, more innocent time, “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” was steaming up the charts. Then the moment was gone.

“Summer In the City,” Lovin’ Spoonful (1966)
Producer Erik Jacobsen and singer/songwriter jug-band veteran John Sebastian had a vision: combine the rootsy feel and melodic sense of folk music with the drive of rock ’n’ roll — the realization of that vision was the Lovin’ Spoonful. Bob Dylan and the Byrds beat the Spoonful to the folk rock punch by a few months and have received most of the accolades for developing the style, but the Spoonful had more hits than either between '65 and '67 (seven Top 10s) and is sadly overlooked in rock history. Tough, gritty “Summer In the City” abruptly answered any questions regarding the Spoonful’s ability to rock, perfectly evoking the sweat, close air and raging hormones of an urban July.

“Girl From Ipanema,” Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto (1964)
Nothing speaks of the luxurious indolence of summer better than the gently swaying, tropical magic of Brazil’s bossa nova. Created in the early-'60s by the brilliant composer Antonio Carlos Jobim — the “George Gershwin of Brazil” — and singer-guitarist Joao Gilberto, who blended Brazilian samba and American cool jazz.

The movement was introduced to America and popularized throughout the world by American sax great Stan Getz, who had a huge hit with Jobim’s “Desafinado” in 1962. Recording a follow up in NYC in '63 with Gilberto and Jobim, Getz and producer Creed Taylor figured a little English on the album couldn’t hurt and Gilberto sang none. Gilberto’s wife, Astrud, spoke and sang a little English and was literally just hanging around the studio, so she was planted in front of a microphone and the rest is history.

Astrud’s insinuating, accented, girlish vocal helped make “Girl From Ipanema” a monster hit, and her an international star. Has anyone ever said “aahh” more seductively?

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