Right or wrong, whenever I hear this verse it seems like the kind of thing Berry would have written. Berry was keenly aware of the injustices of the US legal system, of course, and for that reason among others his songs always breathed in and out the expanse and meaning of the United States as a nation. Near the end of the song, Cochran and Capehart pull a Chuck Berry move: the kid’s gonna take his case to Congress. His parents won’t give him the car unless he works he calls off sick from work (presumably he is sick), and as such… no car. The kid tries to call his girlfriend for a date, but the boss says he’s gotta work late. Released in 1958 and co-written by Cochran and his manager, Jerry Capehart, the song tells the story of a teenage kid who’s discovered that if he’s going to have any fun over the summer, he’s going to have to work, but if he works all summer, he won’t have any time for fun. “Summertime Blues” is Cochran’s greatest performance and, maybe, rock ‘n’ roll’s purest expression of the contradictions faced by the working class.
If he has endured as a romanticized Fifties icon, the best of his performances are exceptional not for their musical innovation or the profundity of what’s said, but for an electric energy that seems to be fighting its way out of the deadness of contemporary life. But those songs are just historical information today while “Summertime Blues”, “Somethin’ Else”, “C’mon Everybody”, “Cut Across Shorty”, “Jeannie Jeannie Jeannie” and other singles are still alive, bristling with his alley-cat voice and frenetic rhythms. The studio tried to fix him with schlocky crooner pop on his only full-length, Singin’ to My Baby (Liberty Records, 1957), a clear reaction to and capitalization on the Elvis Presley phenomenon. His voice ranged from a screeching rockabilly tenor to a doo-wop bass.
He was the good kid with a dark streak, handsome and wholesome but capable of a rebel’s glare. Cochran was thrown from the car, and he died the next day.Īs a cultural figure, Cochran is made of shadows and light. On April 16, 1960, Cochran and his fiancée, the songwriter Sharon Sheeley, along with his tour manager and Gene Vincent, had just left the final concert in Bristol and were taking a cab to the London airport.
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