“Fifty Million Frenchmen” (1929), one of Cole Porter’s first successful, Broadway shows, featured a number of songs that are still sung today; “You Do Something to Me”, “You’ve Got That Thing”, “You Don’t Know Paree”. Many shows of the era rarely existed in a definitive edition. Songs left during tryouts and were replaced by others […]
“Looking at You”
“Wake Up and Dream” (1929) was a musical review that didn’t attract much critical acclaim its day although it did introduce two Porter songs that have remained popular; “What is This Thing Called Love” and “Looking at You”. While it has not been widely recorded, the lyrics of “Looking at You” are sufficiently charming that […]
“It’s Alright with Me”
Porter’s musical, “Can-Can”, a show about the Montmartre quarter of Paris in the 1890’s, opened in New York (1953) to tepid reviews. Critics of the day complained that Porter had not come up with another “Begin the Beguine” or “Night and Day”. The NY Times even declared that “there was nothing original in the score […]
“Night & Day”
Looking back over some of the blog notes I’ve posted since the beginning of last year it struck me that I did not attach a vocal version of this wonderful song to my original post. Porter’s songs are meant to be sung as well as played for their charm lies in the interplay of the […]
“Too Darn Hot”
Based loosely on Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew”, the Broadway show “Kiss Me Kate” (1948) featured a number of memorable Porter tunes: “Why Can’t You Behave”, “Wunderbar”, “So in Love” (see my post of 3/20/16), “Always True to You in My Fashion”, “Brush Up on Your Shakespeare” as well as “Too Darn Hot”. Per his […]
“I’ve Got You on My Mind”
Tucked away in Porter’s musical “Gay Divorce” (1932) – Fred Astaire’s last Broadway show, after which he moved to Hollywood & began his romantic, movie career with Ginger Rogers – among such evergreens as “After You, Who?”, “Night and Day” and “How’s Your Romance” is a charming and not often performed number entitled, “I’ve Got […]
“You’ve Got That Thing”
“Fifty Million Frenchmen” opened in New York (November, 1929) in the midst of the stock market’s collapse to mixed reviews. This was Porter’s first major bid as the composer of a complete score without a collaborator. The plot centered on an American playboy who bets his best friend that he can exist without his money […]
“Begin the Beguine”
This is the only Porter song I am familiar with that is written in the style of a rumba. Porter described the tempo as similar to a rumba only faster. He claimed that the melody was inspired by the first four bars of the musical accompaniment to a native dance that he witnessed on the […]
“Weren’t We Fools”
This Porter song is a bit unusual in that it was written to be a standalone number for a specific singer, Porter’s friend, the singer and comedienne Fanny Brice. She was due to perform it during her vaudeville act at New York’s Palace Theater (November, 1927). Thirteen years after her death (1951), Brice […]
“You’re Sensational”
The 1956 film “High Society”, which featured this song, was the musical remake of a romantic comedy film by the same name which had first been screened 16 years earlier (1940, “The Philadelphia Story”) starring Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart. The plot is essentially the same as in the earlier film although the […]
