“A Summer Song” is a 1964 song by the English pop music duo Chad & Jeremy. It’s a reminiscence of a youthful summer romance, featuring a simple melody with a full orchestral arrangement. The lyrics are both bittersweet and optimistic.
Over the years, many have come to dread the mugginess of New York-area summers; hearing “A Summer Song” immediately puts them in a blissful mood. Above all, “A Summer Song” embodies, with shimmering grace, a truth learned with each passing year by those now of a certain age: that the brightest, most beautiful, most precious wonders of life are also the most evanescent.
The Rise of "A Summer Song"
“A Summer Song” quickly shot to #1 on the American & UK Charts. It is considered one of the signature songs of the British Invasion.
Like the duo's breakthrough selection, "Yesterday's Gone", "A Summer Song" is a reminiscence of a summer romance.
On The Steel Pier Radio Show, Stuart recalled that his collaborators on "A Summer Song", Clive Metcalfe and Keith Noble, were a musical duo linked to Pink Floyd with whom he and Jeremy Clyde had become friendly, and that "A Summer Song" was written and composed in Stuart's flat in London: "We were sitting around jamming on four chords and we came up with 'A Summer Song'." Clive Metcalfe wrote the melody late one night and Keith later added lyrics.
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Metcalfe said: "We performed it one night at Tina's (a Bistro in Piccadilly London) when Chad was visiting. Chad liked the song and later re-wrote the middle, and we all reworked the lyrics, as you hear it today".
"We never thought 'Summer Song' could possibly be a single," Chad recalled another time. "It was just a pretty, romantic song."
Indeed, in the UK, where Chad & Jeremy's "Yesterday's Gone" had been a mild hit, followed by the unsuccessful "Like I Love You Today", "A Summer Song" did not reach the charts; possibly because it was released on a very small label and was largely unobtainable in the shops.
However in the United States, following the near-Top 20 success of "Yesterday's Gone", the track afforded the duo their career record, reaching #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 the week of 17-24 October 1964. "A Summer Song" also went to #2 for six weeks on the Adult Contemporary chart.
When Gary James asked him about it, Stuart suggested: "The American market was bigger. You'd never hear something that sweet in the British charts." "A Summer Song" also reached #6 in Canada and #49 in Australia.
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The selection is featured on the soundtracks of the films Rushmore (1998), The Princess Diaries (2001), and Men in Black 3 (2012), and was used in the "ESPN's Sports Heaven" commercial that aired during Super Bowl XL.
"A Summer Song" Chad & Jeremy
The Lettermen recorded "A Summer Song" for their August 1965 Capitol Records album release The Hit Sounds of the Lettermen, produced by Steve Douglas. The Lettermen made a second recording of the song for "Alive" Again...Naturally, a 1973 Capitol Records release which the group self-produced with Ed Cobb.
Skeeter Davis's RCA Victor album release, Singin' in the Summer Sun, which Chet Atkins and Felton Jarvis produced, included Davis' version of "A Summer Song".
In the summer of 1967, the Doodletown Pipers had an Easy Listening hit with their remake of "A Summer Song", produced by Stu Phillips. The Epic Records release reached No.
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A cover by Swedish pop rock band the Hounds was released as a single by Gazell on 23 August 1967, backed by the song "Never Try to Catch the Sun.
A version of "A Summer Song"1 by Laila Kinnunen was issued by Mediamusiikki in 2000 on the compilation CD Muistojen Kyyneleet, which featured selections Kinnunen had recorded with the Erkki Melakoski (fi) orchestra for the Yleisradio TV series Kuukauden Suositut.
A French rendering of "A Summer Song", entitled "Souviens-toi des nuits d'été", was released in 1965 by Frank Alamo on the Rivièra label.
The Essence of the Song
“A Summer Song” is, in a sense, a cousin to another Sixties song, “Will I See You in September?”, only vastly superior to it. Many lyrics, when printed, look nowhere near as good on page as when they are sung; in fact, they're positively inane. Not "A Summer Song." It's not Bob Dylan, mind you, but each stanza has a sharply engraved image: silver leaves, soft kisses, distant warmth, autumn leaves, rain on the window pane.
The upshot of these images is that love invests everything in the physical world with beauty and meaning forever.
Not "A Summer Song." It's not Bob Dylan, mind you, but each stanza has a sharply engraved image: silver leaves, soft kisses, distant warmth, autumn leaves, rain on the window pane. The upshot of these images is that love invests everything in the physical world with beauty and meaning forever.
The entire first verse is a celebration of warm (literally and figuratively) memories the narrator holds. But nothing that idyllic can stay forever, and the change arrives as soon as the rain beats against my window pane.
The seasonal change coincides with lovers departing: But don’t you know that it hurts me so / To say goodbye to you?
The narrator waxes philosophical about all this: They say that all good things must end someday / Autumn leaves must fall.
Chad & Jeremy: More Than Just a Duet
Chad Stuart and Jeremy Clyde attended the same London arts school as the ’60s dawned. It wasn’t long after they met that they were making music together as a duo. The folk music scene in England was a bit different from what was found in America at the time, more diffuse with offshoots, and only crossing over to the pop charts when the sounds were somewhat old-fashioned. America was much more welcoming to their gentle tones.
They did need to distinguish themselves somewhat from Peter and Gordon, another harmony-laden British duo.
The catalysts for “A Summer Song” were Clive Metcalfe and Keith Noble, a pair of songwriters who knew Stuart and Clyde.
“A Summer Song” did nothing in Great Britain. But America was much more receptive to its softer, sweeter sounds, even if most of the rest of the British Invasion artists were so-called “beat” groups. The song’s sympathetic string arrangement was somewhat new for the Brits invading America.
Chad & Jeremy used the impetus from “A Summer Song” to catapult them to a few more American hits. Their momentum was stunted when Jeremy Clyde, an aspiring actor as well as a musician, took a year off at the height of their music popularity to do a London play.
Asher recalled that one of the running gags at the time was that there really weren’t two similar-sounding British duets - that Chad and Jeremy were Peter and Gordon. Or vice versa.
“We finally ended up playing one show together,” said Asher, “which proved we both existed.”
Duets had in fact enjoyed a modest surge in the early 1960s, with artists like Don & Juan, Paul & Paula, Dale & Grace and Dick & DeeDee. If they were mostly one-hit wonders, the later ’60s had Simon and Garfunkel, two more musical children of the Everlys, who were multi-hit wonders.
As the ’60s wore on, though, record companies often dusted off an older ploy: ad hoc duets, temporarily matching two solo artists to generate some commercial excitement. At its best, this produced the amazing records of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell at Motown. Other times it felt a little gimmicky.
For starters they had a whole lot less production, which to some ears has a real appeal. Unlike some other pairs - Simon, Garfunkel and the Everlys come to mind - Chad and Jeremy got along.
Jeremy Clyde’s first dream was acting, and he left music several times to pursue what ultimately became quite a successful stage and film career. Then he would return to music, and the last reunion continued until Stuart retired, at which point Clyde began periodically teaming up with Asher as Peter and Jeremy, playing the hits of both groups. Their most recent tour, like every other tour in the world, was cut short by Covid.
Stuart did some acting himself, costarring with Clyde in Pump Boys and Dinettes in 1984-85. His best-known role was the voice of Vulture in the 1967 Disney classic The Jungle Book.
Stuart moved to the States in the ’60s and lived in L.A. for years while he toured the entertainment industry. He had jobs as diverse as musical director for the Smothers Brothers and producing radio commercials. He eventually tired of L.A. and moved to Ketchum, Idaho, where he stayed.
Legacy of Chad & Jeremy
Chad & Jeremy’s time in the pop music turned out to be quite fruitful, if brief. As I’ve been reviewing the revolutionary period I grew up in of late, The Sixties (more on that later), stumbled upon one song that I at one point played endlessly. Did so on the little portable plastic turntable I’d been gifted, which could play both LPs and 45s1. And since yesterday was the last day of the warmest season for the Northern Hemisphere, I thought it timely to discuss the forgotten song.
The initial British Invasion was, to say the least “…a cultural phenomenon.” For me, from 1964 on (when a certain group up and changed my life and music habits), I became locked into everything perceived as British.
Chad Stuart (born in Windemere, England, 10 December 1941) and Jeremy Clyde (born 22 March 1941, in Buckinghamshire, England), met while attending London’s Central School of Speech and Drama and became fast friends. Subsequently, Stuart taught Clyde to play guitar, then formed a rockish folk duo known as the Jerks. When that group failed, they reformed into “Chad & Jeremy”, but there was another issue.
label release scored a Top 20 American hit with “Yesterday’s Gone”. All this set the stage for what followed in August 1964 with their gorgeously nuanced and pastoral folk-pop masterpiece that entered Billboard’s Top Five. That it’s lasted with me from then till now all due to its place in the summer of ’64 when everything changed for me at age 10.
For some, this resulted in a move to folksier, personal arrangements. This is evident with the acoustic guitar anchoring this tune’s preamble, Chad & Jeremy‘s dreamy harmonies, and the attractive melody gathering the listener in. To say nothing of the lyrics themselves.
It’s that bit of melancholy that carries this beautifully simple little number aloft. Marrying seasonal happiness with sadness for its youthful audience just beginning to take it all in. Introducing an adult concept of wishful longing and regret to the whippersnappers seeking to understand the world. Lyrically giving them pause to do just that.
The accompanying horns and strings were subtly arranged by Shel Talmy, who was also behind the hard-driving early hits with The Kinks and The Who back then.
Eventually, Clyde turned full-time to acting and appeared in the long-running stage production, Conduct Unbecoming. Stuart signed on as music director for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, later a stint as a staff producer with the great L.A.-based label, A&M Records.
The duo’s story came to an end on December 20, 2020, when Chad Stuart died at his home in Hailey, Idaho, from pneumonia at age 79.
| Song Title | Artist | Year |
|---|---|---|
| A Summer Song | Chad & Jeremy | 1964 |
| Yesterday's Gone | Chad & Jeremy | 1964 |
| A Summer Song | The Lettermen | 1965 |
| A Summer Song | Doodletown Pipers | 1967 |
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