Inside Tracks #40: Chicago, "Saturday in the Park" (Robert Lamm), 1972 w/Covers by Panda Transport, Marco De Farco ft. Rosetta Bove, Leonid & Friends, Hans Annéllsson

Like Sly's "Hot Fun in the Summertime," Chicago's 1972 paean to kites and sunny days practically ushers in the season, itself. Add a sing-along melody & punchy horns for summer in the city, any city!☀

Julius La Rosa (1930–2016) visited the house on a few occasions in the '60s. My dad was an ad exec for the leading Houston radio stations (KTRH-AM, KLOL-FM), and Mom was an entertainment booking agent. She worked for former '30s bandleader, Shep Fields, who had just set up his new Agency office in The Shamrock Hilton. I was 10 in 1965, but I remember meeting him a couple times before my brother and I were told to "scoot off to bed"!

The Chicago-original-recording portion of this “Inside Tracks” debuted (and still appears) on

Matt Fish

’s Best Music of All Time Substack, August 2, 2024:

“Saturday in the Park” by Chicago

Song Genesis: The Lamm Lies Down Near Broadway

Robert Lamm, now 79, from the June 8, 2017 Billboard: “‘Saturday in the Park’ (written and sung by Lamm in 1972, included on the Chicago V album, produced by James William Guercio) is a prime example of how I take from what I experience in the world. It was written as I was looking at footage from a film I shot in [New York City’s] Central Park, over a couple of years, back in the early ‘70s.

“I shot this film and somewhere down the line I edited it into some kind of a narrative, and as I watched the film, I jotted down some ideas based on what I was seeing and had experienced.

“It was really kind of that peace and love thing that happened in Central Park and in many parks all over the world, perhaps on a Saturday, where people just relax and enjoy each other’s presence, and the activities we observe and the feelings we get from feeling a part of a day like that.”

Robert Lamm, one of Chicago’s founders (in 1967) was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2017. His band was inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame the previous year.

Lamm expanded a bit to the ClarionLedger in 2017: “It was two days of filming there [with a Super 8 camera], a year apart. And as I say in the song, I think it was the Fourth of July. But, I edited the film, and I’m not a great cameraman, so there were a lot of blurry shots and shots of my feet. But once I put it together, I basically created the lyrics describing what I saw.

“I already had this music grid, the riff that opens the song. I’m pretty sure I had most of the piano stuff ready for lyrics. I wanted to describe a lovely experience in the park in an era of people yearning for peace and love.”

The single was successful out-of-the-box, reaching # 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, and it became the band’s highest-charting single at the time, helping lift the album to # 1. Billboard ranked it as the #76 song for 1972. The single was certified Gold by the RIAA, selling over 1,000,000 units in the U.S. alone.

According to the song’s Wiki page, “the line ‘singing Italian songs’ is followed by ‘Eh Cumpari’ (the title of a song made famous by Julius La Rosa, shown above, in 1953). Apparently, there’s been some debate about what follows next in the song, but, in a video of Chicago performing ‘Saturday in the Park’ at the Arie Crown Theater in Chicago in 1972 (below), Lamm clearly sings, ‘Eh Cumpari, ci vo sunari,’ the first line of ‘Eh, Cumpari!’”: Just as that line can be heard in the hit Chicago recording!

And, that’s about where we came in!

Robert C. Gilbert

of Listening Sessions shared the link, recently, to the newly-released first live performance of Chicago playing “Saturday in the Park” (at the Kennedy Center on September 16, 1971) which was anywhere from hours to just days after they recorded their hit studio version!

The Covers! Vote for your favorite below!