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Thursday, July 20, 2017

It's Summertime, summertime, sum sum summertime-The Jamies, 1958, co-written by Sherman Feller, Fenway Park PA announcer, 1967-1993



"The Jamies, "Summertime, Summertime,"" released in 1958 

"Sherman Feller (Feller, who co-wrote "Summertime, Summertime" with Tom Jameson, later became more famous as the public address announcer for the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park.)" Sherman Feller, IMDB: "Public address announcer at Fenway Park, Boston, Massachusetts, home of the Boston Red Sox, 1967-1993."

Lyrics for  "Summertime, summertime, sum sum summertime,"-The Jamies, 1958, from genius.com

"It's summertime summertime sum sum summertime
Summertime summertime sum sum summertime
Summertime summertime sum sum summertime
Summertime summertime sum sum summertime summertime...

Well shut them books and throw 'em away
And say goodbye to dull school days
Look alive and change your ways
It's summertime...

Well no more studying history
And no more reading geography
And no more dull geometry
Because it's summertime

(Chorus)

It's time to head straight for them hills
It's time to live and have some thrills
Come along and have a ball
A regular free-for-all

Well are you comin' or are you ain't
You slow poke are my one complaint
Hurry up before I faint
It's summertime

Well I'm so happy that I could flip
Oh how I'd love to take a trip
I'm sorry teacher but zip your lip
Because it's summertime

(Chorus)
Well we'll go swimmin' every day
No time to work just time to play
If your folks complain just say
"It's summertime"

And every night we'll have a dance
Cause what's a vacation without romance
Oh man this jive gets me in a trance
Because it's summertime

Chorus
It's summertime

It's summertime summertime sum sum summertime
Summertime summertime sum sum summertime
Summertime summertime sum sum summertime
Summertime summertime sum sum summertime
Summertime

It's summertime"

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"The Jamies were an American singing group, led by Tom and Serena Jameson. The group's 1958 single for Epic Records, "Summertime, Summertime," reached #26 on the US Billboard Hot 100.

Both "Summertime" and its b-side, "Searching for You", are often described as doo-wop, because of their time period and their a-capella harmonies (with a harpsichord backing on "Summertime, Summertime"). However, both songs may also be described as pop versions of sacred harp styles, as the group started as church singers.[citation needed]

Several singles (many written or co-written by members Jameson and Feller) followed "Summertime, Summertime", none of them hits. In 1962, they re-released "Summertime, Summertime" and hit again, this time peaking at #38.

The song's fame far eclipsed the band's; The Fortunes, The Doodletown Pipers, Hobby Horse, Jan and Dean, The Legendary Masked Surfers, Mungo Jerry, and Sha Na Na all covered the tune, and it was used in commercials for Buick and Applebee's.[2] It was also featured in the 1978 film, Fingers.

Tom Jameson died from cancer on July 19, 2009, at the age of 72.

MEMBERS:
Note:This list has every member of the Jamies
Thomas "Tom" Earl Jameson
Serena Jameson (Thomas Jameson's sister, who sang lead vocals)
Jeannie Roy
Arthur Blair"





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Monday, July 17, 2017

30 for 30 ESPN documentary describes how Mike and the Mad Dog became the template for sports talk radio-Washington Post

July 12, 2017, "New ‘30 for 30’ shows how ‘Mike and the Mad Dog’ gave sports-talk radio its bite," Washington Post, Matt Bonesteel

getty
"New York saturates “Mike and the Mad Dog,” ESPN’s latest “30 for 30” documentary that premieres Thursday night (July 13) at 8 p.m. EDT. From the jazzy soundtrack to the five-borough accents of nearly everyone who appears on-screen, it’s a thoroughly Big Apple story of two Long Island guys who were haphazardly thrown together in a radio studio nearly 30 years ago and ended up as the template for an entire industry. Without Mike Francesa and Chris Russo, there would likely be no “Goober and the Donk” on 1090 The Zone (or whatever your local sports-talk crew and station are called), no “longtime listener first-time caller” and probably no “First Take” on ESPN.

Whether you think this is a good thing is a matter of personal preference, but the impact of the show is undeniable, even if its reach during its prime was limited mostly to the tri-state area. For much of its run — 1989 to 2008 — “Mike and the Mad Dog” was broadcast only on New York’s WFAN, the nation’s first full-time sports-talk radio station. In its later years it was simulcast in a few other cities (Albany, Tampa) and televised by the Yes cable network (which was available nationally on DirecTV), but compared with the likes of other New York-based radio talkers like Howard Stern — whose show was broadcast in 45 markets in 2004, just months before he announced his impending move to satellite radio — Francesa and Russo’s show was grounded in New York and never much strayed from its idioms, customs, dialects and professional sports teams.

“They are the sound that New York makes when it is talking to itself,” Nick Paumgarten wrote in the definitive “Mike and the Mad Dog” story, a 2004 New Yorker article (Paumgarten appears as one of the documentary’s talking heads).

So why devote an hour to a long-gone show that was basically a provincial phenomenon during its long run? Daniel Forer, the director of the documentary, said in a telephone interview that his point in making “Mike and the Mad Dog” was to show just how big of an impact Francesa and Russo made on a genre that once was foreign to radio listeners but now is a fact of life.

“That was one of the things that I wanted to bring out in the show: To share the story of the start of the first all-sports radio station and give a sense of what the show was like for those who had heard of the show but not heard it,” he said.

“It’s like a little-known rock band from England making waves with a top hit over there and you want to hear them over here,” he continued. “The documentary will give [viewers] a chance to see what the fuss was about.”

The talents of the two hosts cannot be discounted: Francesa haughty and pompous, a know-it-all, Russo at times unhinged and borderline incomprehensible but just as knowledgeable as his partner. Taken together, they gave us something that was seen all the time on the field or court but seldom over the air (at the time, anyway): “Mike and the Mad Dog” gave us conflict, our own arguments over what’s good and what’s bad writ loud.

Russo and Francesa had “authentic, combative personalities that were very different,” Forer said. “Chris a little bit more high-pitched, a little bit more enthusiastic, Mike a little bit more low key and a little bit more bombastic. They both had this passion and this wealth of knowledge and they didn’t want to lose to each other. They were not characters, they were themselves. It really was a clash of personalities. …

“People hated them and people loved them but people had to listen to them.”

And that template soon began to be repeated just about everywhere, in part because “Mike and the Mad Dog” proved that sports talk could be highly rated and comparatively cheap to produce (the golden combination to radio executives). WFAN billed itself as the first radio station devoted entirely to sports talk when it launched in July 1987, and WIP in Philadelphia followed just months later. By 2005 there were 500 such stations in the United States, and six years later that number stood at 677. Today there are 790 sports-talk stations, according to Nielsen’s Inside Radio. Many big-time sports cities now have at least two stations. Some have three.

Francesa, who continued on in the “Mike and the Mad Dog” time slot after the pair split in 2008, still is on one of those stations, for now: He says he’s leaving WFAN when his contract is up at the end of this year. Russo got a satellite-radio channel named after him and hosts his own show in roughly the same afternoon time slot as Francesa. The two were better together than they are apart: Francesa has fallen asleep on the air at least twice over the last few years and otherwise has become renowned for ill-informed analysis and borderline offensive language. Russo spends a lot of on-air time grousing about the quality of the other shows on his Sirius channel. But they were something when sharing a studio, and maybe one day they’ll do it again (as has been rumored ever since they started doing sporadic, one-off reunion shows in March 2016).

I have no inside information” on whether the two will join forces once again, Forer said. “That said, I’m a fan so I’m hopeful that whether it’s weekly, monthly, quarterly they get together so a younger generation can appreciate the art of sports-talk radio by the men who did it best.”"



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Saturday, July 08, 2017

NJ Gov. Chris Christie will guest host on WFAN Mon. and Tues., July 10 and 11 in Francesa slot-Bergen Record

Gov. Christie is a Mets fan

7/6/17, "WFAN: Christie's appearances an audition for new job," NorthJersey.com, Bergen Record, Keldy Ortiz and Dustin Racioppi

"For two days next week, Gov. Chris Christie is scheduled to sit in as a guest host on sports-talk radio station WFAN 660-AM New York, an appearance a station spokeswoman called an audition. 

Christie is slated to be heard on Monday and Tuesday instead of afternoon host Mike Francesa, the radio station posted on its website. The two days will be audition days, Jaime Saberito, a station spokesperson, said Friday, as Francesa is set to leave the station once his contract ends later this year.

Christie will host the 2 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. show along with Evan Roberts, a WFAN host. He isn't the only one slotted to audition next week. Mike Valenti from WXYT-FM 97.1 in Detroit, former National Football League quarterback Chris Simms, SNY's Brian Custer and NFL Network and WFAN contributor Kim Jones will also audition next week, the station said. Roberts and his midmorning co-host, Joe Benigno, are also scheduled to audition in the afternoon slot, the station said.

Mark Chernoff, the station's program director and vice president of its parent company, CBS Radio New York, previously told The Record he would consider the governor, whose term ends in January 2018.

"If he's interested and we're interested, it's worth pursuing," Chernoff said in February.

Chernoff has reportedly said he would like to have a plan in place for Francesa's replacement by Labor Day.

Christie has previously said he has an interest in sports broadcasting. But the governor is prohibited from seriously seeking or considering job prospects while in office.

Mike DuHaime, Christie's longtime strategist, said Friday that the governor has not precluded any job opportunities that may come his way, but that he is still focused on finishing his remaining six months in office....

Christie regularly fills in as a co-host on the station’s morning program “Boomer and Carton.” Chernoff told The Record earlier in the year that he had planned to rotate Christie into the afternoon slot during the summer if the governor was willing....

"The governor enjoys the opportunity to talk about sports on WFAN and is happy to have the chance to do that with Evan Roberts for eight hours next week over two shows. Despite those eight hours, as always, he will be on the job as governor," Christie spokesman Brian Murray said in a statement. "As for the governor's future, he appreciates the interest and concern about his next employment from his friends in the media, but he is not concerned at all about it.""

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Comment: I've heard Christie a few times on WFAN, and he's very good.


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