Summer In The City
Quincy Jones
You’ve Got It Bad Girl, 1973
Summer In The City
Oscar Brown, Jr.
Oscar Brown, Jr. Goes To Washington, 1965
One of my main motivations for posting this Quincy Jones song was to ask if anyone knew who sampled the section from :53-1:02 but of course, I figured it out in the course of writing the post – and I’m really patting myself on the back because it wasn’t on my semi-trusty resource the-breaks.com. This is one of those songs that plays like a dream sequence for me – one of those dreams where I walk down a New York City street and turn a corner and I’m in Cleveland but it doesn’t seem strange. The Pharcyde sampled the intro on “She Keeps Passin’ Me By” which was immediately recognizable even in this much mellower format, then the song moves off into unfamiliar territory but just as I start to forget about the first sample, the section (:53-1:02) that Massive Attack sampled on “Exchange” comes in like an old friend who’s name I can’t remember. It goes as fast as it came and we continue until 1:55 where the Roots borrowed a bit for the chorus of “Clones.” That one took a minute to place as well because I don’t think of the Roots as a sampling group even though I’m pretty sure they’ve used samples on every album. Then Valerie Simpson’s vocals come in somewhat unexpectedly at 2:27 although, I guess they are right on time, as she starts in the middle of the second verse of the original (Lovin’ Spoonful) lyrics. I know that other people have also sampled this song but these three were definitely the most recognizable for me.
This Oscar Brown, Jr. song was a song that I was thinking about posting for a while but put off because I didn’t have much to say about it. I still don’t, other than it’s great and it’s not a cover of the Lovin’ Spoonful, it actually came out a year before.
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