Nobody sings it better

George Gershwin wrote “Summertime” as a lullaby, for the opera Porgy and Bess in 1935, with words by DuBose Heyward. Billy Stewart heard a launching pad. His 1966 single for Chess opens with a burst of scat that arrives like someone kicking the door in, and from there he doubles words, rolls his lips, stutters syllables into percussion — a lullaby rebuilt as pure joyful commotion. Thousands have sung it. And frankly, nobody sang it better.

The wonder is that none of it feels like showing off. Every trill and repeat serves the same message the melody always carried — the living is easy, hush little baby, don’t you cry — Stewart just refuses to whisper it. The horns and strings behind him keep trying to be an orchestra while he treats his voice like a drum kit, and the tension between the two is where the record lives. It reached the top ten on both the pop and R&B charts, his biggest hit.

He didn’t get long. In January 1970 his car left the highway and went off a bridge into the Neuse River in North Carolina, killing Stewart, thirty-two, and three of his bandmates. Play the single loud and hear how much life he packed into two and a half minutes.