"New celebrities whiz by so quickly these days that even the real ones seem to last only fifteen minutes. Yet all the while, Cole Porter still sits up there high and dry on the ninetieth floor, untouched by time or fashion, like a cast-iron statue of a basic joke. Whatever else the culture may be up to this year, there always seems to be room for Cole at the top. His wit still clicks, his tunes lilt, and the mere mention of his name makes people smile in both anticipation and memory.”—Wilfred Sheed, The House That George Built: With a Little Help from Irving, Cole, and a Crew of About Fifty (2007)
Like novelist Dawn Powell, Cole Porter—born on this date in 1891—can be thought of as what Powell called a “permanent visitor” to New York. Both were Midwestern implants who came to Gotham during the 1920s. Although each hobnobbed among the intelligentsia and glitterati, they became, once the Jazz Age was over, all too familiar with depression and sorrow.
In the late Wilfred Sheed’s collective biography of the creators of the Great American Songbook, his chapter on Porter recounts a pivotal meeting in 1926, when the native of Peru, Ind., and graduate of Yale told a startled Richard Rodgers that he wanted to write “Jewish songs.” Five decades later, the still-surprised collaborator of Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II admitted that it was the WASP bon vivant—not himself and his partners, nor the Gershwins, nor Irving Berlin, nor Harold Arlen—who created “the most enduring Jewish music” of them all.
The facilitator of that 1926 encounter between the two future giants of the American musical comedy was Noel Coward. In his recent book of collected lyrics and reminiscences, Finishing the Hat, Stephen Sondheim, comparing Porter and the British king-of-all-entertainment, noticed the usually discussed commonalities between the two (notably, homosexuality and fascination with the rich), but also a major difference between the two, one detrimental to Coward’s art. While Porter was born rich, Sondheim observes, Coward, born in poverty, “was an intruder and covered his desperation to be part of it by sneering at it. It’s the difference between affection and affectation.”
So brilliant are Porter’s lyrics that the melodies are often forgotten--not unlike Sondheim’s. But, as Sheed writes, Porter’s “words might have made it to Broadway at any time, but not by themselves, and it would take him the best part of a decade to get the tunes he waned, that’s to say tunes that could ‘touch your heart’ or tickle your funny bone.”
My own first intense exposure to Porter came via the melodies, sans lyrics, in the form of an unjustly neglected LP by two classical guitarists: In the Still of the Night, by John Holmquist and Dan Estrem. You gain an even greater appreciation of songs such as "I've Got You Under My Skin," "Night and Day," and "Love for Sale" when you can only experience them through sounds rather than words.
Two more thoughts, sparked by reminiscences of people who knew Porter:
1) I chose the image accompanying this post because it shows Porter as an indefatigable craftsman. Indeed, Sheed takes issue with the thought that it was Porter’s wife Linda who dragged him away from parties so he could write. In fact, Porter had a strong, abiding work ethic. Another person who felt the same way about the composer was Moss Hart, Porter’s collaborator on the musical Jubilee. In a 1959 essay in Harper’s Magazine on his friend, Hart recalled how, on a round-the-world cruise, Porter tore himself away from everyone when he heard a native dance and, struck by one particular word, composed “Begin the Beguine.”
In the late Wilfred Sheed’s collective biography of the creators of the Great American Songbook, his chapter on Porter recounts a pivotal meeting in 1926, when the native of Peru, Ind., and graduate of Yale told a startled Richard Rodgers that he wanted to write “Jewish songs.” Five decades later, the still-surprised collaborator of Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II admitted that it was the WASP bon vivant—not himself and his partners, nor the Gershwins, nor Irving Berlin, nor Harold Arlen—who created “the most enduring Jewish music” of them all.
The facilitator of that 1926 encounter between the two future giants of the American musical comedy was Noel Coward. In his recent book of collected lyrics and reminiscences, Finishing the Hat, Stephen Sondheim, comparing Porter and the British king-of-all-entertainment, noticed the usually discussed commonalities between the two (notably, homosexuality and fascination with the rich), but also a major difference between the two, one detrimental to Coward’s art. While Porter was born rich, Sondheim observes, Coward, born in poverty, “was an intruder and covered his desperation to be part of it by sneering at it. It’s the difference between affection and affectation.”
So brilliant are Porter’s lyrics that the melodies are often forgotten--not unlike Sondheim’s. But, as Sheed writes, Porter’s “words might have made it to Broadway at any time, but not by themselves, and it would take him the best part of a decade to get the tunes he waned, that’s to say tunes that could ‘touch your heart’ or tickle your funny bone.”
My own first intense exposure to Porter came via the melodies, sans lyrics, in the form of an unjustly neglected LP by two classical guitarists: In the Still of the Night, by John Holmquist and Dan Estrem. You gain an even greater appreciation of songs such as "I've Got You Under My Skin," "Night and Day," and "Love for Sale" when you can only experience them through sounds rather than words.
Two more thoughts, sparked by reminiscences of people who knew Porter:
1) I chose the image accompanying this post because it shows Porter as an indefatigable craftsman. Indeed, Sheed takes issue with the thought that it was Porter’s wife Linda who dragged him away from parties so he could write. In fact, Porter had a strong, abiding work ethic. Another person who felt the same way about the composer was Moss Hart, Porter’s collaborator on the musical Jubilee. In a 1959 essay in Harper’s Magazine on his friend, Hart recalled how, on a round-the-world cruise, Porter tore himself away from everyone when he heard a native dance and, struck by one particular word, composed “Begin the Beguine.”
2) I chose the following quote, from Frank Sinatra, because it mentions my hometown: “Many, many years ago when I was a young man, I was working in a roadhouse in Englewood, New Jersey, just across the river from New York." [This would be The Rustic Cabin--which would actually have been just the next town up from me, in Englewood Cliffs, N.J.] "One Sunday evening, when there were about thirty or forty people present in the club, I was singing with the six-piece orchestra. I was also the head waiter, answered telephones, and made out the radio programs…. A party of people arrived. I recognized Mr. Porter. Of course, I was absolutely astounded that he’d be in the same room. I had been singing only about a year-and-a-half or two years and I always tried to do as much Cole Porter material as I could because, as I said, I enjoyed his lyrics. Another reason: Mr. Porter, unlike Mr. Rodgers, let’s say, didn’t go out and get loaded because of an arrangement somebody else made of his music. Mr. Porter was a very liberal man in that sense. He really didn’t care how you arranged it as long as you did the song in its entirety. Even if you changed the tempo from a slow four to a twelve-eight, it made no difference to him.”
No comments:
Post a Comment