A sizzling mix for summer listening
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/7/5/800063844/series/a-sizzling-mix-for-summer-listening/
A sizzling mix for summer listening
Black Music Sunday is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music, with over 250 stories covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.
Over the years there have been a multitude of musical tributes to the summer and dancing. I have an earworm which won’t go away and it’s “Dancing in the Streets” by Martha and the Vandellas:
I knew every word as I suppose quite a few of you do. But I realized that in spite of knowing their music, I knew very little about Martha and the Vandellas. K. Michelle Moran at Musician Guide corrected that blank:
Even though the vocal group’s peak occurred for but a few years early in its career in the 1960s, the hit singles produced by Martha and the Vandellas-including “Dancing in the Street,” “Heat Wave,” and “Nowhere to Run”–are among the most enduring in Motown and pop music history, having found their way onto soundtracks, radio playlists, and commercials decades after they were originally recorded. And in an era of sweet, sound-alike girl groups, the act distinguished itself as gutsier and grittier than most. […]
[Martha] Reeves chronicled her humble beginnings in the autobiography “Dancing in the Street: Confessions of a Motown Diva,” co-authored with writer Mark Bego in 1994. She was the third oldest in a family of 12 children, and the first daughter. She was born July 18, 1941 in a house on Washington Street in Eufala, Alabama, where a midwife assisted her mother because the family couldn’t afford a doctor. Reeves didn’t remain in Alabama for long, however. She was just under a year old when the entire family pulled up stakes and moved to Detroit, where they lived with relatives who had relocated earlier in search of employment.
Reeves’ vocal talent was evident at a very young age. At the age of three, she and older brothers Benny and Thomas won a church talent contest. […]
In 1960, Reeves (who also sang professionally around this time as “Martha LaVaille”) joined a group called the Del-Phis, which included Michiganders Annette Beard, Gloria Williamson, and Rosalind Ashford. The vocal group recorded the single “I’ll Let You Know” for Chess subsidiary Checkmate Records, but the single went nowhere. In her autobiography, Reeves blamed the label, accusing it of not supporting the act.
It was a mixture of luck and circumstance that brought Reeves and her Del-Phis to the attention of the Motown powers-that-be. After a chance encounter at Detroit’s Twenty Grand nightclub, Reeves got a job as secretary of Motown A&R director William “Mickey” Stevenson. While at work one day, she learned that background vocalists were needed immediately for a recording session with Marvin Gaye. When other vocalists weren’t able to come to the studio, Reeves and her fellow Del-Phis were enlisted to sing backup on Gaye’s “Hitch Hike” and “Stubborn Kind of Fellow.” Then, when fellow Motown singer Mary Wells reportedly failed to appear for a recording session, Reeves and the Vandellas found themselves in the studio recording a single of their own, “I’ll Have to Let Him Go”-but not as the Del-Phis. Instead, the group was called Martha and the Vandellas, with “Vandella” taken from a merger of Van Dyke (a Detroit road near Reeves’ parents’ home) and singer Della Reese, a favorite of Reeves’. Martha and the Vandellas was thus officially formed in 1962. However, Williamson opted not to sign a contract with Motown and reportedly left the act at that point.
When another Martha and the Vandellas single, the ballad “Come and Get These Memories,” cracked the Top 40 in 1963, the powerful Motown songwriting and production trio of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland offered their song “Heat Wave” to the group. It became one of the band’s biggest hits, peaking at number four on the Billboard pop chart and topping the R&B chart for several weeks in 1963.
This short documentary tells the story of how Reeves was discovered:
On my list of summer hits is also the Isley Brothers’ “Summer Breeze”:
And there’s also Sly and the Family Stone with “Hot Fun in the Summertime”:
Nat King Cole’s “Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer” is also notable:
Kool & the Gang’s “Summer Madness” is great. A sample from the song was used for DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince’s hit “Summertime”:
Janis Joplin also took a stab at “Summertime”:
Also, one of my earworms, there’s Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City”:
I could hear these lyrics in my head but had zero idea that the Spoonful recorded this or that they were Canadian. Their rise and fall is pretty wild, as this documentary shows:
There have been so many versions of “Summertime” recorded that I can’t list them all here, but my favorite is probably Ella Fitzgerald’s:
The musical tributes to summer are so numerous that I can’t list them all here. Join me in the comments section below to post yours and listen to more. What is your favorite summer sizzler?
We'll get straight to the point: The financial hardships that Daily Kos is facing this year are tough.
We continue to be paywall-free. We continue to be supported by our readers, not billionaires or corporations. But we need to bring in more revenue. We are leaning on our community more than ever to help make ends meet.
Conversation
All comments are subject to our Community Guidelines. The views expressed in comments are those of the individual authors and don't necessarily reflect the views of Daily Kos.
All Comments