Mungo Jerry – In The Summertime
About The Song
“In the Summertime”, released in 1970, is the debut single by British rock band Mungo Jerry. It reached number one in charts around the world, including seven weeks on the UK Singles Chart, two weeks on one of the Canadian charts, and number three on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in the US. It became one of the best-selling singles of all-time, eventually selling 30 million copies.
This buoyant tune was written by Ray Dorset, who was the group’s lead singer and guitarist. He penned the song in 1968 when he was working for Timex in the UK – his band was just getting started and music was more of a hobby at the time. Dorest says that the famous melody just popped into his head one day, and the next day he wrote the lyrics very quickly.
“It’s got no chorus; all it’s got is a melody that goes over and over again with a set of lyrics that conjure up a celebration of life,” he said. “Especially if you’re a young person: it’s a great day, you’ve managed to get a car – preferably with the top off – you’re cruising around, and if you’re a guy you’re picking up girls.”
Few songs have endured like this one, which finds its way onto playlists every summer and is constantly being commissioned for movies, TV shows and commercials. “It’s an honor for me to have a song that I wrote that people want to associate with so many different moods and feelings and events,” Ray Dorset said. “The longer it goes on, the more it becomes like ‘Happy Birthday,’ because when everybody thinks of the summer, they think of ‘In The Summertime.'”
Around the two-minute mark, the song stops and we hear a car drive by, punctuating the line, “we’ll all go into town.” This was a recording of the engineer’s sports car driving by the studio.