Skeeter Davis “Singin’ in the Summer Sun”

I’m glad that my magic eightball planchette thingy landed its arrow on this 1966 record for review in the summer—it would have felt weird in the dead of winter—for obvious reasons. The album cover is a nice painting of a blond woman at the beach—obviously supposed to be Skeeter Davis, though it doesn’t look like any picture I’ve seen of her—but that’s okay, I guess. She’s in the foreground and, oddly, in the background the sky is mauve! And there is just the slightest glimpse of water, as if we’re looking over a big dune. The funniest thing is there’s a group of four young people, and one is a guy sitting in a chair with an acoustic guitar and a shirt with red and white vertical stripes like he’s one of the Beach Boys. Maybe he is. The usual 12 songs, and seven contain the word summer, two have the word sand, one boardwalk, one lifeguard, and one sunglasses. You’ve heard a lot of these, of course, by other artists, but Skeeter Davis has a way of improving on even the most over-recorded tunes. (I honestly think she could have done an entire Lennon-McCartney record and it would have been good.)

May favorites here are… all of them—but there’s a few worth mentioning again. “Dixie Cup of Sand” (John D. Loudermilk)—first time I’ve heard that song—is kind of weird and good. The most jaunty (and that’s sayin’ something) version I’ve yet heard of the massively over-covered “Under the Boardwalk” (The Drifters)—with a kitchen sink of extras—on paper that sounds like a disaster, but it actually makes me like that song again. “That Warm Sumner Night”—with cricket effects—great song. “(Theme from) A Summer Place” has one of her excellent, signature talking parts in it. Her version of Gershwin’s “Summertime”—the world’s most covered song—is one of the stranger takes I’ve heard (I even like it better than Lana Del Rey’s and Iggy Pop’s versions)—it makes the song new—and it’s even a little creepy. A version of The Shangri-Las’ “Remember (Walkin’ n the Sand),” is also weirdly atmospheric, a little odd—including weirdly off seagull effects. Her rendition of Chad & Jeremy’s “A Summer Song” is one of the more sadder and bubblegummier sad bubblegum songs I can recall. “Sunglasses” (Loudermilk again) I know from another of her records, and I always liked it—good lyrically. “That Summer Sunset” (Sandra Rhodes) is a song I don’t know at all—and it’s just about my favorite one here.

The other funny thing with this record is the extensive liner notes by Gerry Wood (Vanderbilt University) about what they went through to get this record on vinyl—I won’t go into it all—you’ll have to buy the record and spend a warm evening with your reading glasses and the back cover. But it has to do with Skeeter being hospitalized for exhaustion (a reminder that I really have to get around to reading her autobiography!) then, producer Chet Atkins selecting songs with Skeeter—but vamoosing to the Caribbean without telling anyone what songs (and Skeeter’s too out of it to remember). Meanwhile, new producer Felton Jarvis forges ahead with his own selection of songs—and the session going ahead with Ronnie Light singing—and then the engineers removing his voice—and Skeeter recovering… Okay, I just said I wasn’t going to recite it…  and there I go… Well, the record speaks for itself.  I’ll stop now. But first, I’ve got to add my favorite detail, when Skeeter woke from “medicated” sleep and said, “Bring me a cheeseburger and some pink thread.” Which strikes me as one of the more Skeeter Davis Skeeter Davis stories I’ve heard.

8.18.23