Song of the Day: What the World Needs Now is Love, lyrics by Hal David, music by Burt Bacharach, first hit the charts in 1965, with a recording by Jackie DeShannon [YouTube link], who took the song into the Top Ten of the Billboard Hot 100. We started this Summer Music Festival (Jazz Edition) asking the question, “What is This Thing Called Love?“; we end it with the acknowledgment that whatever love is, and however you express it, the world needs it now. This song was recorded by many popular artists through the years, including Dionne Warwick, the Supremes, Barbra Streisand, and Tom Clay [YouTube links], whose Top Ten version (a medley with “Abraham, Martin, and John“), filled with social commentary, decried bigotry, racism, and division. Broadway for Orlando [YouTube link] recorded an all-star charity rendition of this classic, in the wake of the 2016 attack on the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in which 49 people were killed and 53 were injured. Jazz-inflected recordings of this song are plentiful, including renditions by Chicago, as well as by vocalists Sammy Davis, Jr. (with Buddy Rich), Jack Jones, Sarah Vaughan, Buddy Greco, Billy Eckstine (in a medley with “Just a Little Loving”)—and instrumentalists Stan Getz, Bud Shank, Wes Montgomery, Stanley Turrentine, Cal Tjader, Doc Severinsen, George Shearing, Al Cohn and Zoot Sims, Bill Frisell, McCoy Tyner, and David Hazeltine [YouTube links]. As we hang onto the last few hours of summer before the Autumnal Equinox arrives in the Northern hemisphere at 9:31 am, let the love in. We’ll return next year with a new incarnation of our annual Summer Music Festival.