Black Music Month: Sampling and Summer Madness

Crate digging. Interpreting. Sampling. Whatever you refer to it as, it is one of my absolute favorite things about music. I loved reading album liner notes as a kid, and I still do. In particular, I loved reading the credits; I was fascinated by who wrote a song, who sang background, who played what instrument, etc. I also really loved when an album cover featured the song lyrics. I would always be the most interested in any sample information that I ran across, especially if it was confirming one that I already knew or suspected. Sampling is simply the incorporation of certain parts or elements of an older or previously released recording into a newer one.

You may be wondering why Kool & the Gang are pictured above. Well, Kool & the Gang are a heavily sampled band in general, but in honor of today being the first day of summer, I decided to highlight a song that is synonymous with summer which also samples a song of theirs.

“Summertime” by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince

“Summer Madness” by Kool & the Gang

“Summertime” by DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince was released in 1991 and famously interpreted Kool & the Gang’s song “Summer Madness”, which was released on their Light of Worlds album in 1974, specifically the bass line and the melody. [As an aside, I must say that this song doesn’t sound anywhere hear 46 years old. I actually turned a coworker on to it earlier this year, pre-Covid and quarantine, who heard me playing it while working in my classroom after school one afternoon. His exact words were, “What IS that you’re playing?!” That’s how fresh it still sounds.] I love both songs so much, and this was actually my introduction to the original. I am sure that this can be said about a few songs, especially for people like me who were not around in the 1970s or when the original songs were produced; sampling introduced us to some great music that we very well may have missed or been exposed to much later otherwise. Granted, growing up listening to the “quiet storm” also helped me learn some original versions to songs first. Ironically, I believe that quiet storm radio shows were introduced during the late ‘70s; music from the ‘70s has always been popular on quiet storm radio.

I remember hearing “Summer Madness” on the quiet storm growing up; it was upon hearing it for the first time that I realized that “Summertime” had sampled it. This sample is also important to me in that “Summertime” perfectly walks the listener through a summer day, while “Summer Madness” is the perfect soundtrack to a warm summer night, in my opinion. I mean, look at the image used for the YouTube video for it above. It’s perfect! The song just takes me somewhere else each time I hear it. Actually, a lot of the R&B music of the 1970s has a “summery” feel to me, and this vibe seemed to return in the ‘90s, which was probably due in large part to the samples. It was evident even in some songs that did not contain samples though, in my opinion.

More to come…

That’s all for this entry on sampling, but there is much more to come! We all know how heavy 2020 has been so far, as well as how different this summer will inevitably look. For these reasons, “summer madness” may just be the perfect description for this new season. Despite all of that, I still say to you: Happy First Day of Summer!