Monday June 27, 2022 “In the Summertime” Mungo Jerry
So we have the first full week of summer ahead of us and it’s time for us to start planning all the frivolous fun that the season suggests and what could be a better start than with the completely frivolous and appropriately named one hit wonder by Mungo Jerry “In the Summertime”.
Let’s get it out of the way right now. The band was originally known as Memphis Leather and then The Good Earth before changing their name to Mungo Jerry after the character Mungojerrie from the T. S. Eliot book Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats which would later be the basis for the Broadway play Cats. Bet you never saw that connection coming, Mungo Jerry and Cats.
Today’s song was written by Mungo Jerry lead singer Ray Dorset, no he’s not Jerry. In fact no one in the band is either Jerry or Mungo or Mungojerrie. You may note that there is no drummer in the video as there are also no drums in the song and around the two-minute mark, the song stops and you hear a car drive by, punctuating the line, "we'll all go into town." This was a recording of the engineer's sports car driving by the studio.
Mungo Jerry would have a few additional hits in their homeland UK but “In the Summertime” would be their only US charting song but it would sell more than sixteen million copies worldwide (sixteen million copies worldwide!!) and become a ‘summertime’ classic right up to today.
Stay safe and well…and "life's for livin' yeah, that's our philosophy”.