For those too young to remember or for whom the info simply slipped the mind -

"In The Summer Of His Years" was written in a matter of hours by two staff members of the UK's hilarious weekly satirical program That Was the Week That Was, broadcast on Friday nights in the UK and for a brief run on NBC (I believe) in the USA.

TWTWTW alumni included David Frost, Graham Chapman, major UK poet John Betjamen, Peter Cook (later of Peter Cook & Dudley Moore), fabulous writer and warrior Roald Dahl, and many more.

Try as the USA would, we just never mounted a satirical show that could be reasonably compared to TWTWTW. Laugh-In made an effort but was decidedly lame (through much of the show) compared to its biting and often far more daring British forbear.

In case we've forgotten - satire laws in the UK, especially 60 years ago, were more stringent and potentially damaging to a performer's career than almost anything we had here. There was a certain sense of risk to the broadcast and release of the song, though nothing I know of resulted from it.

A coda: UK time was 6 hours ahead of USA Central time (which was Texas time). TWTWTW writers and composers worked furiously to come up with a serious and mournful show that November 1963 weekend. IIRC, the show came in at a bit less than a half an hour but was rebroadcast here on CBS I believe, including TWTWTW chanteuse Millicent Martin performing a moving rendition of the song.

The Chad Mitchell Trio combined "Summer" with a slowed down version of "Rally Round The Flag, Boys," one of George F. Root's several outstanding anthems that he wrote during our Civil War. That didn't work very well IMO. Maybe I can round up some recordings and post them here.