When I first heard this I thought it was one of them newfangled mash-up songs. It sounds like Ricky Nelson vs. The Blues Magoos. But it turns out, this version of "Summertime was recorded in 1962 -- four or five years before the Magoos' "We Ain't Got Nothin' Yet." You ahe to wonder if they stole their famous riff from Ricky. I found this on the Crud Crud blog. The MP3 is HERE

One of my all time favorite songs...

Ricky Nelson is god-like!
The Blues Magoos 'We ain't got nothing' is great too but
Ricky Nelson's 'Summertime' and almost any other of his songs :Wow!
Warm week end;

Jeezus am I glad no one here thought Summertime was a Big Brother & The Holding Co. original....

Or...better yet...a Janis song... LOL

Egg

Love Sculpture (Dave Edmunds' band in the 60's) did a pretty good version of the song. Rest of the LP (Blues Helping) were blues covers like Shake Your Hips!

Cool video.

"Summertime" is indeed a classic. The first version I ever heard was Sam Cooke's, which still is one of my favorites. Janis Joplin (with Big Brother & The Holding Company) probably did the nmost famous takes. Back in the mid '60s practically every working garage band in Oklahoma City did "Summertime" for a slow dance.

The Zombies do a great version of Summertime, but it is not thier song, nor is it Ricky Nelson's. It was written by composer George Gershwin for the opera Porgy and Bess in the 1930s and has since been recorded by over 2500 artists. Wikipedia sez: "Summertime is the name of an aria composed by George Gershwin for the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess. The lyrics are by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin, and the song soon became a popular jazz standard. Gershwin is said to have based this song on a Ukrainian lullaby, Oi Khodyt Son Kolo Vikon (A Dream Passes By The Windows), which he heard in a New York City performance by Oleksander Koshetz’s Ukrainian National Chorus. Gershwin began composing the song in December 1933, attempting to create his own spiritual in the style of the African American folk music of the period. It is sung multiple times throughout Porgy and Bess, first by Clara in Act I as a lullaby and soon after as counterpoint to the craps game scene, in Act II in a reprise by Clara, and in Act III by Bess, singing to Clara's baby." 1945 version from the film Rhapsody in Blue:

Interesting. You can hear the same riff in Astral Plane by the Modern Lovers as well.

Wow,that's cool! I didn't even know that was a Ricky Nelson song. I thought it was The Zombies. There's probably a good chance that that riff was in some earlier blues song.

Yep, a total rip. I'm glad they did though.