The month of September has many great, earworm-worthy songs dedicated to it. Earth, Wind and Fire's disco-funk hit “September” is perhaps the most famous of the bunch, with honorable mentions for Green Day's “Wake Me Up When September Ends” and the Kurt Weill standard “September Song” (by Frank Sinatra or Lou Reed, choose your poison), among enough other contenders to form a respectable themed playlist. September is a reliable musical metaphor for getting older, breakups and loss, nostalgia for lost innocence and the slow encroachment of darkness.
But the Bay Area's collective earworm for this particular September has not hit the standard notes, I suspect. Instead, songs like Martha and the Vandellas' “Heat Wave,” Nelly's “Hot in Herre” have been getting a lot of play. But the thermometer-busting weather earworm crown belongs to Ella Fitzgerald's rendition of “Too Darn Hot” from the Cole Porter Songbook.
Several of my friends have mentioned that this song has been looping in their heads since the unseasonably horrid high temperatures arrived. It's the perfect tune for when you're fed up with the heat, yet there's no end in sight. Too hot to cook. Too hot to eat. Too hot to sleep, and definitely too hot to sex it up. Too. Darn. Hot.
It's true that September in San Francisco is typically much warmer than the foggy days of August. The Folsom Street Fair, held at the end of the month and speaking of sexing it up, has been rained out once in the last 15 years or so; most of the rest of the time it's balmy enough to encourage the public nudity the fair is famous for. But a warm weekend or two is one thing; weeks and weeks of temperatures in the 80s and 90s are another. Your friends in other parts of the country may scoff but really, this weather has been no joke. September 2015 has been a bonanza of record-setting highs all across the region. Cooling centers opened up in Alameda, Santa Clara, and Contra Costa counties. Schools let out early and canceled some outdoor sports. Spare the Air days proliferated. Blame global climate change and the weakening jet stream if you wish, or butterfly wings fluttering somewhere in the Indian Ocean, or simply a perverse twist of meteorological fate, but whatever the cause, the result has been a boon for ice cream vendors, room fan manufacturers and air-conditioned movie theaters in the area — and misery for just about everybody else.
“Too Darn Hot” was written for the 1948 Broadway show
Kiss Me Kate, a musical take on Shakespeare's
Taming of the Shrew. It appeared in the movie version and accompanying soundtrack as well, sung by Ann Miller, and it's also been covered by the likes of Petula Clark, Mel Tormé, and Erasure. But Fitzgerald's 1956 version, with its dirty horns and sprightly tempo, is definitive. It manages to be both quaint and saucy, with its references to
the Kinsey Report and its verbal playfulness: “Mr. Gob for his squab” indeed. Not for nothing is Ella Fitzgerald considered possibly the greatest jazz vocalist of all time. The singer almost makes suffering and sweating sound fun. Almost.
The heat finally broke late last week. The extended forecast, which is probably just as reliable as reading tea leaves but certainly as comforting, seems to indicate that more moderate temperatures are here to stay for a while. Nonetheless, I'm going to keep Ella close and stash a few more popsicles in the freezer, just in case.