MUNGO JERRY – "In The Summertime"

It has the distinction of being the first Number One that I first heard on John Peel’s Sunday afternoon show – not normally a place one heard chart material.

It was a bit of a novelty at the time, too – a ‘maxi’ single, the size of a 45 but to be played at 33 1/3 rpm. No doubt there were lots of other maxi-singles at the time but the one I really remember was Ten Years After’s Love Like A Man. Alvin Lee was better looking, I think, than Ray Dorset! Both songs formed the soundtrack to one of the most memorable summers of my life, for it was the summer I first discovered sex down in the south of France where I spent much of August. And for other reasons, too, this is up there with my favourite summer sounds.

On the back of the success of In the Summertime, Mungo Jerry brought out an LP with a full cover photograph and a pair of cardboard coloured glasses which made Ray Dorset and co appear in 3D when you looked at the photo. In some ways the goodtime sound of In the Summertime was a throwback to skiffle, perfect for open air festivals,and as the original group rapidly disintegrated their sound turned more to rock. Because of the perennial success of this record, it’s easy to forget that their follow-up, Baby Jump, was also a number one and they- or Ray Dorset and sidemen- continued to have sporadic hits till 1974, which was also about the time Ray Dorset finally lost planning permission for his sideboards.

Yes, in a sense this is another example of one’s perception of a record being altered by its use in an advertising campaign. I’ve seen footage of Mungo Jerry doing this song, and it’s as aspirational as a hip-hop video – but for the bling-laden motor, read the idyllic lifestyle of Ray Dorset sitting around strumming his guitar on a languid summer’s day – a lifestyle for which it probably helps to be one of Tom’s rich older boys (mind you I had a similar impression watching a Levellers video).

But then the government information film put paid to the idyll. I don’t know how dodgy lines like “speed along a lane, do a ton or a ton and 25” or “have a drink, have a drive, go out and see what you can find” sounded in 1970, but now many of us have had imprinted on those lines the image of a horrific car smash.

Still a classic evocative summer record though. And after Mungo Jerry’s other number one, Ray Dorset reappears on this list in ten years’ time…

“In the summertime when the weather is hot
You can reach right down and touch your cock.”

That is what we used to sing in school.

Yes we really should have a companion series to popular featuring the singles that only made it to no.2 which should also lead to some marvellous toilet humour.

p^nk, that’s an interesting argument, but in all honesty I think it referred to masturbating over the women who were ‘on your mind’ in the next part of the song, since women are less likely to bare flesh in the colder months and in those pre-internet days young boys couldn’t access pornography and we lacked the long-term memory to recall the bare legs and bosoms we’d seen in the summer.

Surely remembering the names of the OTHER tracks on the maxi-single deserves some sort of prize?

Well, it was an incredible summer, for me at least. Never one like it before or after. This song, along with “Yellow River,” “Lola,” and “All Right Now” were the soundtrack to those months.

For me to say any more would be to lapse into total subjectivity. Enough said.

The song makes me think of Pink Panther chocolate bars, which were on sale at that time and were actually made of pink chocolate.

This song has a very special and original sound. Maybe it has jug or skiffle-roots – but also mixed with a special latin music- and merengue-feeling. Summer spell… And the singing is so great! Different other artists tried to cover this song: Mixtures, Bob Dylan, Elton John, Shaggy & Rayvon etc. But In The Summertime is not In The Summertime without this singing from Ray Dorset with two different voices. Nearly ITS-sound from Shaggy is close to the sound of Mungo. No hasard – Mr. Mungo Ray Dorset was producing the music himself for Shaggy playing all guitars.

I was pondering whether to give this classic a 9 or a 10 on the readers vote, thinking 7 was surely too low – only to find the average is 5.9!?!

Rockin’ all over the parking lot: http://musicsoundsbetterwithtwo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/hard-rock-calling-free-all-right-now.html Merci for reading, everyone!

Here’s a conundum: where to say goodbye to one of the rock gods of my youth, Alvin Lee. I wish he could have held on for another year and then I could honestly have said that he died ten years after I saw him live at the Hexagon, Reading, alongside Edgar Winter.

Anyway, I see I have already alluded to the tenuous connection with Mungo Jerry; the gimmick of the summer was the 33rpm ‘maxi-single’, of which both In The Summertime and TYA’s Love Like A Man were prominent examples. Alvin’s demise seems to be getting surprisingly little publicity compared to Kevin Ayers a week ago; I’d have thought that Alvin was easily the more widely known of the two. The riff from Love Like A Man must have been picked out by zillions of wannabe guitarists.

I’m guessing (though I don’t know if this is true) that the Woodstock movie was more a media thing in America than in the UK, and it was Ten Years After’s “I’m Going Home” live at Woodstock (as put on film, that is) that really put Ten Years After on the musical map here. Not that too many people here seem to know anything else they did (and I include myself among the general unknowing).

I thought it was a real wanky performance at the time. Now I really appreciate it. (Not to say that I’ve decided it’s entirely unwanky. I’ve changed my attitude towards that kind of wanky.)

Just came across the 1990s Mungo Jerry drink-driving PSA, and it’s lost none of its power in the last 20 years. Think it’s forever tainted the song for me too – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5ma_Xv7rGM

This was pretty ubiquitous at the time – it was easy to sing along to and created a pleasantly mellow vibe (albeit one with some darker undercurrents). Its primitive instrumentation made it of its time but also prevented it from seeming too dated as it became a regular part of UK radio playlists in subsequent years.

All a bit cheesy to my ears I’m afraid. 3/10.