Song of the Day 6/20: Nat King Cole, “Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer”

Has there ever been a summer better suited to nostalgia than this one? After the Year Without a Summer, people are going to appreciate every little pleasure a good bit more.

Nat King Cole was more TV star than singer by the time this jolly number reached No. 6 on the Hot 100 in 1963. It would be his last Top 10 hit before he died of lung cancer less than two years later, just 45 years old.

There’s a reason the song sounds like something you’d hear at Oktoberfest — it was written and released in Germany the year before as “Du spielst ‘ne tolle Rolle.” The English lyrics were written by Charles Tobias, who was also responsible for “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.”

The original German lyrics had very little to do with summer. “Du spielst ‘ne tolle Rolle,” which translates as “You Play a Great Role,” is sung by a man telling a woman she will play the starring role in his memoirs. He does mention watching her stroll through Milan in a bikini and dancing on a table, and Tobias included a line about girls wearing bikinis on the beach, but that’s not quite the same thing.