Bobby Hebb’s SUNNY was a massive hit during the summer of 1966. I sang it to a beautiful blonde 13 year-old girl on a Cape Cod beach. We stood barefoot in the sand. Sally had blonde hair. The sun was setting into the sea. It was the last week of August. Tomorrow the weekly vacationeers headed home. I was one of them.

“Are you going to kiss me?” She closed her lips.

I had a girlfriend. Kyla expected me to be faithful. I shut my eyes and pretended the lips were hers.

The name in my head belonged to neither Sally nor Kyla, because the words of a song were too strong to deny.

“Sunny, thanks for being so true.”

I never saw Sally again, but each time I hear the song SUNNY I can feel the sand between my toes.

Here’s the URL for SUNNY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82-vs3Ga2-U&feature=share

1966 redux.

The other day Peter Crowley send the YouTube link to SUNNY along with a Wikipedia excerpt;

“On the same day that JFK was assassinated in November of 1963, Bobby Hebb’s older brother Harold was killed in a knife fight in Nashville, Tn. Devastated by the tragic events, Bobby wrote “Sunny” in the spirit of keeping a better disposition. Interestingly though, he did not immediately record the song. A Japanese artist named Miko Hirota who was very popular in Japan recorded it first, and she did quite well with it there. Bobby finally recorded his own version of it in 1966 and the song became a monster hit in the U.S. peaking at #2 that summer.”

Bobby Hebb reputed this myth by saying that he had been comforted by the music of Gerald Wilson’s LP YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT.

“All my intentions were just to think of happier times – basically looking for a brighter day – because times were at a low tide. After I wrote it, I thought “Sunny” just might be a different approach to what Johnny Bragg was talking about in “Just Walkin’ in the Rain.”

I was unfamiliar with that jazz trumpeter and listened to several of his tracks.

None were from YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT, but they epitomized cool.

Having lost my baby brother in 1995, I know the power of music.

It’s as strong as the power of love.

“Sunny, you’re so true.”

To hear BLUES FOR YENYA by Gerald Wilson please go to the following URL