"Summertime," with music by George and Ira Gershwin and lyrics by DuBose Heyward, had its beginnings in Heyward's novel Porgy, published in 1924.

Heyward and his wife, Dorothy, were students of the black neighborhoods of Charleston, South Carolina.

Readers noted in Heyward's work an acute attention to details of the black lifestyle. The Gershwins' opera Porgy and Bess was based on a non-musical play Heyward had written based on the novel.

The lyrics of "Summertime" resonate with the tones of the area:

Billie Holiday was one of the earliest to popularize the song by recording it. She and her band were faithful to the origins of the piece. Later, many others like Ella Fitzgerald and Janis Joplin covered it with their own distinctive styles.

By the late 1960s, the song had proven its ability to migrate to other times and cultures. There's a timelessness to it, and the mood of the song is malleable depending on the interpretation. I'll describe different moods interpreters bring to it in a subsequent post.

Alan Morrison
Santa Clara, California
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Moderator's Note: Here are three versions of "Porgy and Bess." -- George Spink

Tarik Osman (left), manager,
and James, bartender, at Birdland.

Photo Courtesy of Dr. Roberta E. Zlokower

Few people realize what a strong influence Oklahoma City had on swing.

The Oklahoma City Blue Devils, a.k.a, Walter Page's Blue Devils, were founded by Page in 1925 and claimed Jimmy Rushing, William (later "Count") Basie, and Eddie Durham as members. Durham (born in San Marcos, Texas) is known as a pioneer of the electric guitar--among his many other accomplishments, including arranging Glenn Miller's "In the Mood." Many of the Blue Devils later joined Count Basie's Kansas City Orchestra.

One could legitimately argue that the roots of 1930s Kansas City swing were actually in 1920s Oklahoma City jazz. Douglas Henry Daniels, a black studies professor at UC Santa Barbara, detailed the history of the Blue Devils in his 2006 book One O'Clock Jump. In the book, Daniels describes jazz guitarist Charlie Christian's boyhood in Oklahoma City. Both the Christians and the Rushings lived on the south edge of a warehouse district called Bricktown, currently a redeveloped area of shops, restaurants and a AAA-level minor league ballpark near downtown.

Deep Deuce (N. Second St.), where the main jazz clubs were located, was on the north edge of Bricktown. Ralph Ellison, National Book Award winning author of Invisible Man, remembered Deep Deuce fondly in his poem "Deep Second." He sat in with the Blue Devils from time to time.

I grew up in northwest Oklahoma City and knew nothing of this history growing up. In the 1960s, the downtown area was decaying, and we avoided it and the east side, though my dad did work downtown in the Liberty Bank building. We had a maid who was African-American, and I can't recall her ever talking about her side of town.

In 1968, as my first act of political activism, I petitioned door to door in my neighborhood with a friend to avoid being bused to the east side to school. We collected hundreds of signatures but failed to have any effect on the court-ordered desegregation plan. My parents sent my brothers and me to private school for awhile. Later we moved to the Putnam City school district, which wasn't affected by the busing order.

My sole exposure to the musical heritage of black Oklahoma City as a boy was watching the Frederick Douglass High School marching band in a parade. They were fabulous musicians and marchers. There was simply no comparison between the high-stepping Douglass band and any other band in the parade. Later I learned that Zelia N. Page Breaux, a music teacher at Douglass for decades, had nurtured many swing talents there, including Charlie Christian and Jimmy Rushing. During that time, Douglass High School was located where the ballpark is now.

Doug Loudenback's blog contains a solid history of Deep Deuce, including many photos.

Alan Morrison
Santa Clara, California
Email Me

[George suggested I repost this on The Palomar so its readers here could see it. I first posted it on George's Blog a few of days earlier.]

The Theremin is a musical instrument you'll instantly recognize by its sound, particularly if you're a fan of 1950s sci-fi films like The Day the Earth Stood Still or the TV series The Outer Limits. It makes a warbling, haunting electronic sound that sci-fi directors of the era clearly associated with space and the future.

As the BBC points out in this clip, Russian Leon Theremin (Lev Termin if you're transliterating the Russian) invented the Theremin in the 1920s and originally marketed it as the Etherphone because of the way it sounded. Theremin used two oscillators and two antennas in the instrument he designed. To vary the volume, you move a hand near one antenna. Then to vary the pitch, you move your other hand near the other antenna. It's one of the few musical instruments you play without touching it. For that reason, it's not an easy instrument to play.

Some indie rock bands have been using the Theremin. Liam Finn, son of Crowded House's Neil Finn, has been known to play one from time to time. Liam appeared recently on David Letterman to promote his LP. That's right--his LP! He didn't play the theramin on TV, though.

You can buy a Moog Etherare Theremin for less than $400 from Amazon.com. Companies like Moog and Longwave make them. In fact, synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog, who died in 2005, was so inspired by the Theremin that it was the first product he built and sold. Some current Theremins use light sensors rather than RF antennas to track the movement of your hands, and can be made quite small as a result. But I still think the coolest ones are the old-fashioned kind.

Alan Morrison
Santa Clara, California
Email Me

Alan became acquainted with George when he came across the Tuxedo Junction web site several years ago. He has eclectic music tastes and loves music history.