Life is a Beach

Thought  for the day:  Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer, those days of soda and pretzels and beer... [Nat King Cole]

Know how music has the ability to transport us to another time and place? Well, that's kinda what today's bloghop is all about. Hosted by Armchair Squid, Cygnus, and Suze, the idea is for each participant to post five favorite summertime songs, and to share a memory connected to each one. I know the songs I'm gonna post will certainly transport me to another time and place. I hope you'll come along for the trip.

As our hosts describe today's hop:

Ah, summer. Sunny mornings full of possiblity, lazy poolside afternoons and rockin' nights lit by tiki torches. What songs bring back the sunscreen and beach-sand to you? What songs defined your one perfect summer, be it decades ago or just getting started with today's solstice? 

Sounds like fun, right? It was hard for me to narrow down my choices, but I'm gonna go in chronological order. Not that I haven't had any wonderful summers in the past four (Crap! Make that FIVE.)  decades, but the earlier years had a much louder soundtrack, if you know what I mean. Those were the days when my friends and I knew the words to all the popular songs, before stuff like wedding marches, lullabies, and kiddie songs nudged our priorities in different directions.

Okay, ready?

1. My first choice is from 1958. It's Summertime, Summertime, Sum Sum Summertime... It's a silly little song, but it's one my friends and I loved to sing. A lot. At the beach, in the alley, walking down the street...it didn't matter where we were... and we were convinced that we sounded better than the Jamies did, too:

2. Fast forward a couple years to 1960, and to a song by Jo-Ann Campbell, called Kookie Little Paradise. Yep, it was another song for us girls to sing together... including the Tarzan call at the beginning... plus it had an added bonus. We danced to it, too. Any of you other gals remember hanging out in a friend's club cellar doing the cha-cha and dancing the bop with a doorknob?

                                                                           
3. Now it's forward a couple more years to 1962, and Brian Hyland's Sealed with a Kiss. My gal pals and I were a little more dramatic by then, and this song reflected our feelings about our boyfriends going away on vacation. (The cads!)

                                                                     
4. For some reason, this song is the most evocative of all for me. I can almost smell the coconut oil suntan lotion, and feel the sun baking my back. This song seemed to play more than any other song that summer while my friends and I were at our local beach. The year? 1965. And the song? I Got You, Babe by Sonny and Cher:
                                                     

                                                                     

5. This last song is an odd one. Even as I selected it, I knew what a weird choice it was. Still, I had to go there. It was the summer of 1966, and the last time my cousin Phyllis and I went camping down the ocean together. Every night, we sang around the campfire, and every night, kids from miles around (That's what it seemed like, anyway.) would join us to listen, and to make requests. Believe it or not, THIS is the song those kids asked us to sing most often. We're not positive, but it's entirely possible that over that long weekend, we sang The Ballad of the Green Berets more times than SSgt Barry Sadler did.

And there ya have it. How about you? Are there any songs that carry you back to those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer every time you hear it? (Remember any of my picks?)

Thinking about those days of singing around the campfire prompted me to look for this picture. Beieve me, with all the albums and boxes of photographs we have around this house, that was no small task. Anyhow, here it is: Phyllis and me in front of our tent. She's a year younger than I, but she's always been much taller. She has that statuesque model look about her., and I... don't. I guess you could say we were the Mutt and Jeff combo of the family... or the string bean and lima bean. Geez, it seems like that picture was taken just a few years ago. I can remember those clothes so well... my jeans were pink. And I had a pair of sneakers the same color. Yep, I was a very girly tomboy.

Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.