Review: Cole Porter, Selected Lyrics, ed. Robert Kimball, The Library Of America: American Poets Project, 2006
Cole Porter, one of the many outsiders who have shaped and defined American popular song,
a wealthy expatriate Francophile, also one of the so called “lost generation” was in some way a symbol of his era, the 30s: “He is those years [...] He is the style of all those shows. He represents it better than anybody else [...] Porter’s so ....thirties!” (Johnny Mercer in Wilk, p. 138). But a lot of his songs also have achieved a kind of universality and timelessness, they are still sung and listened to today.
But occasionally contemporary listeners have problems with his works. Already in the 20s he was told that his ”standards are too high. The wit and poetry of your lyrics are far beyond the people” (Furia, p. 155). But also Porter’s way of “expressing depths through apparent frivolity” might not be to everybody’s taste. Additionally he was not only rich but wealthy - but he always liked to throw bricks into the glasshouse of complacency of his equally rich compatriots - and he didn’t have no problems showing it . Today - in the age of ”roots”-music - every rich songwriter prefers to imitate the poor boy on the street.
Some of the most absurd comments about Porter can be found in Michael Gray’s “Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” where his songs are criticized for not being “courageous and memorable” (p. 164). Not memorable? That’s simply factually wrong! Not courageous? Judging from how many of his songs were censored Porter obviously was regarded as a serious threat to American middle class sexual mores. Musical theater in New York offered a freedom to songwriters unknown in other genres at that time. They were able to write about love and sex even against contemporary moral values. Especially Porter - who simply didn’t care about American puritanism - was busy writing up to the limits of what was possible and even regularly overstepped those limits. Writer Ring Lardner in fact once criticized "suggestiveness and dirt in songs on the radio" cropping up "under the influence of Mr. Cole Porter" (McBrien, p. 149).
“Each of the great masters of the Broadway lyric had his source of special inspiration: Lorenz Hart had loneliness, E. Y. Harburg had marxism; Oscar Hammerstein II had optimism; Ira Gershwin had his brother; Porter had sex. His songs glorified the ‘sweetness of sin’ [...] He didn’t just want to invoke love; he wanted to taste it” (Lahr, p. 39).
So Porter wrote about one night stands (”It was great fun/But it was just one of those things”), extra- and premarital sex (”We’re all alone/No chaperon can get our number”), bigamy and prostitution (”Ev’ry morning when labor is over [...]”) Porter’s most famous song “Night And Day” is a “straight-ahead statement of passion” (Friedwald, p. 264) and obsession, staggering in its directness and open sexuality. It’s not about someone who wants to marry a wife, catch the rainbow trout and have a bunch of kids who call him ‘Pa’, it’s very explicitly about sexual attraction.
Problems only arose when the shows went out of town, especially to Boston where there was a censorship bureau busy at least until the 50s. The Hays Office did its best to erase sexuality out of movies although they missed a lot, for example ”Night And Day”. A lot of songs were only printed and recorded in sanitized versions or banned from the radio. Songwriter Carolyn Leigh once remarked that Porter ”didn’t give a shit if his songs were banned from airplay” (Bloom, p. 197) and Robert Kimball in his excellent introduction to this new volume of Porter’s “Selected Lyrics” notes that thanks to his “risk-taking, future songwriters may have had an easier time of it” (p. xx).
Though Porter”s complete works are available this collection is a welcome addition, not only because he now seems to be included in the pantheon of American poetry. The selection is good although Porter scholar Robert Kimball concentrates on the well known songs. Some of Porter’s more obscure songs are missing, for example “The Cocotte”, a gritty portrait of another outsider of society:
A busted, disgusted cocotte am I,
Undesired on my tired little bottom, I,
While those fat femmes du monde
With the men whom once I owned
Splash round like hell-bound hippopotami
[...]
Equally worthwhile would have been the “Lost Liberty Blues”, his most explicit criticism of American puritanism, a song written for a show in Paris but never recorded or performed in the USA. Here he has the statue of liberty bemoaning her fate:
I’ve got the lost liberty blues.
Those lost liberty blues.
With a pair of handcuffs on my wrists
And padlocks on my shoes.
Can you expect me to be gay
Or ask me to enthuse?
While reformers lead ‘em
From the battle cry of freedom
To the lost liberty blues.
But otherwise this collection offers Porter at his best. He was responsible for some of the most beautiful and touching love songs ever written. Porter “connected with his audiences above all by how tellingly [...] he could write about emotional relationships and their transient nature. His songs were at home with the extremes of passion and the moods of loss [...]. The intensity of his love lyrics, the penetration of their insights into the complexity of human relationships, are among the qualities that distinguish his bravest and best work”, as Robert Kimball notes in the introduction (p. xv/xvi). Among the best are for example “Ev’rytime We Say Goodby”, “Weren’t We Fools”, “You Do Something To Me”, “After You, Who” (one of the precursors of Dylan’s “If Not For You”) and of course “I Get A Kick Out Of You” (another song later mutilated by censorship). "All Through The Night" is a morbid fantasy about someone dreaming of making love to a lost love far way with "echoing rhymes" (Furia, Poets, p. 171) depicting the "monotone of the evening's drone". Porter was not only the “quintessence of cool” but “his love songs openly celebrate the few among us who have the guts to come out and express honest emotion and show the world how we feel”(Will Friedwald).
On the other hand he also was the master of the list song and a “fearless rhymer” (Bob Dylan), often enough demonstrating a nearly anarchistic joy. “Anything Goes” is the ultimate song of the 30s, ”Let’s Talk About Love” a terrific tour de force for Danny Kaye. “Farming” - also written for Kaye - jokes about the rural nostalgia of the 40s and might have been the first ever song to use “gay” in its modern sense.
Farming, that’s the fashion,
Farming, that’s the passion
Of our great celebrities of today.
Don’t inquire of Georgie Raft
Why his cow has never calfed,
Georgie’s bull is beautiful, but he’s gay!
Mussing up the clover,
Cussing when it’s over,
Makes ‘em feel more glamorous and more gay.
The natives think it’s utterly utter
When Margie Hart start churning her butter,
Farming is so charming, they all say.
“You’re The Top” is of course the definite parody of all “You are so grand” love songs:
I’m a frightened frog
That can’t find no hop
To log.
But if, baby, I’m the bottom,
You’re The Top.
Nearly all of these lyrics are a joy to read although they are of course only half of the song. Porter was also one of the most inspired composers. He actually wrote songs, not words with some music or music with some words and he was able to weave intricately lyrics, melody, harmony and rhythm in a way that is rarely found today.
Literature:
- Robert Kimball (ed.), The Complete Lyrics Of Cole Porter, New York 1992 [first published 1983]
- Robert Kimball (ed.), Cole, Woodstock & New York 2000 [a wonderful coffee table book first published in 1971]
- Michael Feinstein, Nice Work If You Can Get It. My Life In Rhythm And Rhyme, New York 1995 [p. 200-208]
- Will Friedwald, Stardust Melodies. A Biography Of Twelve Of America’s Most Popular Songs, New York 2002 [p. 242-275: “Night And Day”]
- Philip Furia, Poets Of Tin Pan Alley. A History Of America’s Great Lyricists, New York 1990 [p. 153-180]
- Ken Bloom, The American Songbook. The Singers, The Songwriters And The Songs, New York 2005
- John Lahr, Honky Tonk Parade. New Yorker Profiles Of Show People, London & New York 2005 [p. 36-43]
- William O’Brien, Cole Porter. The Definitive Biography, London 1999.
- Max Wilk, They’re Playing Our Song, New York 1991
© LostChords
lostchords@morerootsofbob.de
MoreRootsOfBob.com
24.06.2007