The song that saved Nile Rodgers’ life
Born in the Lower East Side of New York City in 1952, Nile Rodgers was surrounded by music from the beginning, with the likes of Richard Pryor, Thelonious Monk, and Lenny Bruce all visiting his childhood home in Greenwich Village. Here, we join the music icon as he discusses the song that saved his life.
After playing the guitar in a range of African, Persian, Latin, jazz and Boogaloo bands in the 1960s, Rodgers formed The Big Apple Band in 1970. By 1977, they’d toured the world and changed their name to Chic. Having cemented himself as disco’s golden boy, Rodgers found work writing and producing for some of the ’80s music scene’s biggest names, including Diana Ross, Duran Duran and David Bowie, for whom he wrote ‘Let’s Dance.’
At the start of 2023, Nile Rodgers sat down with The Times to discuss some of the cultural artefacts that have shaped his life, from his favourite film (It’s Ben-Hur) to his favourite paintings. When asked to name the song that saved his life, Rodgers had to reach back into his childhood. “Wow, there’s been so many that have caused a seismic shift in my life,” he began. “For me I’d go back to [the opera] Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin. There are so many songs in there that make me cry and make me feel the emotion of real love and loss. I was very young when I saw it and it still resonates with me.”
Based on DuBose Heyward’s 1925 novel, Porgy & Bess is frequently cited as the first American opera, mainly because earlier operas by Black composers like Scott Joplin were ignored by mainstream cultural critics at the time and have subsequently been ignored by white historians.
The production, which tells the story of a disabled Black beggar and his attempts to save the woman he loves from her possessive lover and avaricious drug dealer, was first performed in Carnegie Hall in 1935. Like so many of Gershwin’s works, it saw Gershwin blend early jazz influences with orchestral colours, giving birth to several jazz standards still in circulation today, including the immortal ‘Summertime’, subsequently recorded by Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and countless others.
You can revisit Gershwin’s original version of ‘Summertime’ below.