Riff Summer Challenge

The Sweet Reign of Summer Madness

A playlist to accompany a poem

Drums please! — opening line of D.J. Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince’s “Summertime”

Like the song says, summertime is the “time to sit back and unwind,” because it’s all about the grooves that soothe and move “like the summer’s a natural aphrodisiac.” When I was growing up in the late 70s into the early 80s, it always seemed ironic to me that people liked to show off their dancing feet in spite of the summer heat, which made the groove ever so important.

For Your Summer Listening Pleasure (in no particular order):

“Summer Madness” is an instrumental tune that was released in 1974 by Kool & the Gang on their album Light of Worlds. It reached number 35 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 36 on the Hot Soul Singles charts. It has subsequently become one of the most sampled R&B compositions of all time. As of 2018, over 145 recordings had sampled it, including “summertime” by D.J. Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. To me, it is the summer jam of jams, and an extraordinary build-up song, featuring fabulous keyboards and synthesizer work from their original keyboardist, Ricky West, and that really doesn’t climax until its end. Ironically, two years after its release, this was used during a quiet scene in the movie, Rocky, and basically become his love theme for Adrian in that same scene.

Harlem River Drive by Bobbi Humphrey

I remember this song from childhood, because my dad had it on 8track. I rediscovered it in high school when Jazzy Jeff sliced and diced its chorus into a song called “A Touch of Jazz” by him and the Fresh Prince.

Places and Spaces by Donald Byrd

This is another gem from childhood. But, I must admit I didn’t really fall in love with Byrd until I was in college towards the end of the Golden Age of Hip Hop in the early and mid-nineties, when I took notice of his music, especially his 70s stuff, being heavily sampled by many different groups like A Tribe Called Quest, Black Moon, Main Source, and the Pharcyde.

Mister Magic and Summer Song by Grover Washington, Jr.

As much as my dad played Grover Washington, Jr. when I was younger, I would’ve sworn that he was my father’s favorite saxophonist until I finally came of age and asked him. He said his all-time favorite was probably a toss-up between Coleman Hawkins and Dexter Gordon (though he loved Charlie Parker too) because of their longevity he said.

While his first three albums established him as a force in jazz and soul music, it was his fourth album in 1974, Mister Magic, that proved a major commercial success. The album climbed to number 1 on Billboard’s R&B album chart and number 10 on Billboard’s Top 40 album chart. The title track, which became a summertime staple for deejays at family reunions, picnics, and house parties, reached №16 on the R&B singles chart (#54, pop). He is considered by many to be one of the founders of the smooth jazz genre. Another one of my personal favorites by Washington is more uptempo, but a definite summertime anthem aptly entitled, “Summer Song.”

Rock Creek Park by The Blackbyrds

The Blackbyrds are an American rhythm and blues and jazz-funk fusion group, formed in Washington, D.C., in 1973. The group was inspired by trumpeter Donald Byrd and featured some of his Howard University students: Kevin Toney (keyboards), Keith Killgo (vocals, drums), Joe Hall (bass guitar), Allan Barnes (saxophone, clarinet), and Barney Perry (guitar). Orville Saunders (guitar), and Jay Jones (flute, saxophone) joined later.

The Blackbyrds have influenced the hip-hop generation, with Gang Starr, Da Lench Mob, and Full Force sampling their music. In particular, their 1975 song “Rock Creek Park,” another definite summertime anthem because of its subject matter, being an actual park in the D.C. area, and its funky synth sounds, from the City Life album has been sampled numerous times by groups and artists such as MF DOOM, De La Soul, Eric B. & Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, N.W.A, Massive Attack, Ice Cube, Heavy D, Nas , Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, Tone Lōc, Mac Dre, and Wiz Khalifa.

Funkin’ for Jamaica by Tom Browne

Tom Browne is an American jazz trumpeter. He rose to prominence with Sonny Fortune and had major hits in 1980 and 1981: the №1 Billboard magazine R&B single “Funkin’ for Jamaica (N.Y.)” and the №4 R&B single “Thighs High (Grip Your Hips and Move)”. “Funkin’ for Jamaica” became an instant summer classic with an irresistibly tantalizing funky bassline that is still loved by fans young and old across several genres, especially jazz and funk.

Westchester Lady by Bob James

Bob James is an American jazz keyboardist, arranger, and record producer. He founded the band Fourplay and wrote “Angela”, the theme song for the TV show Taxi. Music from his first seven albums has contributed to the formation and breakbeat foundations of hip hop. Among his most well-known recordings are “Nautilus”, “Westchester Lady”, “Tappan Zee”, and his version of “Take Me to The Mardi Gras”.

James’s early albums have been sampled often, with his songs “Nautilus” and “Take Me to the Mardi Gras” leading the field. “Nautilus” has been sampled by Eric B. & Rakim in “Let the Rhythm Hit ‘em”, Run-D.M.C.’s “Beats to the Rhyme”, Ghostface Killah’s “Daytona 500”, DJ Jazzy Jeff’s “Jazzie’s Groove”, Jeru the Damaja’s “My Mind Spray”, Freddie Gibbs’s “Extradite”. It appears on the Funcrusher Plus LP from Company Flow and Nangdo’s “Nikes”. The bassline from “Nautilus” appears in “Children’s Story” by Slick Rick.

“Take Me to the Mardi Gras” incorporates in its first four measures a bell-and-drum pattern that is one of hip hop’s basic breakbeats. It has been sampled by Crash Crew’s “Breaking Bells (Take Me to the Mardi Gras)”, Run-D.M.C.’s “Peter Piper”, LL Cool J’s “Rock the Bells”, the Beastie Boys’ “Hold it Now, Hit it”, Missy Elliott’s “Work It”, will.i.am’s “I Got it from My Mama”, “This Is Me (Urban Remix)” by Dream, “I Want You” by Common, and “Take It Back” by Wu-Tang Clan. James’s 1981 song “Sign of the Times” was sampled by Warren G and Nate Dogg in their 1994 single “Regulate”. The track “Tappan Zee”, an ode to James’ record label of the same name, was sampled for Arrested Development’s “People Everyday (Metamorphis Remix).

My favorite happens to be “Westchester Lady”. Because of its groove and catchy keyboard hooks, it seemed to be the song that different deejays would always throw into their scratch mixes at certain points, namely by D.J. Jazzy Jeff in “A Touch of Jazz,” which also featured bits and pieces of Bobbi Humphrey, Grover Washington, Jr., Donald Byrd, and Marvin Gaye.

Sun Goddess by Ramsey Lewis

After his classic acoustic albums in the 1960s, Ramsey Lewis wanted to head in a new musical direction in the 1970s. As the mid-70s approached, he reunited with Maurice White, who at that time was with his own band, Earth, Wind & Fire. Members of EW&F including White played on the album sessions, while Philip Bailey added vocals. Sun Goddess is a jazz album by Ramsey Lewis released on Columbia Records in 1974, and its title track has remained a summer staple for years upon years, for the most part because of the influence of EW&F upon Lewis and the overall sound of this soul-tinged song.

Warm Weather by Pieces of a Dream

Pieces of a Dream is an American R&B and jazz fusion group. The group was formed in Philadelphia in 1976 by bassist Cedric Napoleon, drummer Curtis Harmon, and keyboardist James Lloyd who were all teenagers at the time. The group based their name on “Pieces of Dreams”, a Michel Legrand tune recorded by Stanley Turrentine that they regularly performed. During 1981 Pieces of a Dream had a minor soul hit with “Warm Weather’’(vocals by singer Barbara Walker) which was recorded on Elektra Records and co-produced by Dexter Wansel, and became an almost automatic summertime groove for steppers and radio stations featuring the up and coming sounds of smooth jazz, which basically came into its own during the early 80s.

Summertime by D.J. Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince

Perhaps the greatest feelgood summer anthem ever produced by a hip hop group, in my opinion, is “Summertime” by D.J. Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, which is lyrically an ode to summer, but also musically an homage to its source of inspiration, “Summer Madness” by Kool and the Gang. It is also my favorite song by the duo for these two simple reasons.

Thank You for reading! You might also like this poetic offering about the twilight sounds of summer heavily inspired by the iconic Miles Davis recording, Kind of Blue, featuring John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderly, Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, and Jimmy Cobb:

2021 MDSHall is a poet and a creative, who is the creator and curator of The Bazaar of the Bizarre and a submissions editor for The POM, living in Illinois, also writing in association with the Writes of Passage, “forged on the wordwrights’ anvil,” and the Muse Echo Collective, Purveyors of the Poet Tree of Discoursing Drums beating by any dreams necessary.