Bang, Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) :: Nancy Sinatra

“Seasons came and changed the time.
When I grew up, I called him mine.
He would always laugh and say,
‘remember when we used to play?’”

A cover that I prefer to the original, and am actually more familiar with than the original, Nancy Sinatra’s version of Cher’s song is one of my all-time favorite songs.

During a Summer in my childhood I spent time visiting friends of my family in San Jose. My friend Laura, born two days before I was, had moved away with her family, but we had all kept in touch, and these Summer visits happened back and forth for a few years.

I cannot recall exactly how old I was during this particular visit – 10 maybe – or a lot of what we did during the visit, except for afternoons spent in their swimming pool, and their nextdoor neighbor, Jean.

She was our mothers’ age, I think, but so different than anyone else we knew “that age” (pretty much other mothers). She was divorced (something we had not yet encountered in our own families, yet), she drove a convertible, she had a black tiled swimming pool, she was loud, and she laughed and swore a lot.

She also had a room just for her stereo and record collection; a room she let us hangout in during that one Summer.

Nancy Sinatra’s album ‘How Does That Grab You?’ was one that we would play often, and this song was my favorite track on it. I remember lying back on the floor in that room, letting this song wash over me, making up stories of true love gone bad in my head. I think somewhere in those imaginings I pictured this song being sung by Jean herself, as she drove off into the night in her convertible, leaving her lost love behind her.

It made me very happy to hear this song play during the opening scenes of Kill Bill Volume 1.

Bang, Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) :: Cher

“Music played, and people sang.”