You can now download Summertime from Annie Lennox’s forthcoming album Nostalgia. Already released on vinyl, Nostalgia won’t be available for general released until 21st October. The track was originally written by George Gershwin (September 26, 1898 – July 11, 1937)
“Summertime,” the first song in George Gershwin’s folk opera Porgy and Bess, is a simple lullaby. The song’s history, on the other hand, has been anything but simple. It has been recorded thousands of times in dozens of ways: Billie Holiday turned the baby’s lullaby into a sultry torch song; Janis Joplin turned “Summertime” into a psychedelic blues-rock classic; Sam Cooke injected a quiet tinkling of soul beyond even what Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong managed in their version; in 1997, rock band Sublime even sampled the song for their reggae/ska hit “Doin’ Time.”
