Cole Porter

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1= Begin the Beguine
2= I've Got You Under My Skin


Cole Albert Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964) was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre.

After a slow start, he began to achieve success in the 1920s, and by the 1930s he was one of the major songwriters for the Broadway musical stage. Unlike many successful Broadway composers, Porter wrote the lyrics, as well as the music, for his songs.

After a serious horseback riding accident in 1937, Porter was left disabled and in constant pain, but he continued to work. His shows of the early 1940s did not contain the lasting hits of his best work of the 1920s and '30s, but in 1948 he made a triumphant comeback with his most successful musical, Kiss Me, Kate. It won the first Tony Award for Best Musical.

Porter's other musicals include Fifty Million Frenchmen, DuBarry Was a Lady, Anything Goes, Can-Can and Silk Stockings. His numerous hit songs include "Night and Day", "Begin the Beguine", "I Get a Kick Out of You", "Well, Did You Evah!", "I've Got You Under My Skin", "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" and "You're the Top".

He also composed scores for films from the 1930s to the 1950s, including Born to Dance (1936), which featured the song "You'd Be So Easy to Love"; Rosalie (1937), which featured "In the Still of the Night"; High Society (1956), which included "True Love"; and Les Girls (1957).

[montage]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYHXTJxoZqo


Begin the Beguine" is a popular song written by Cole Porter. Porter composed the song between Kalabahi, Indonesia, and Fiji during a 1935 Pacific cruise aboard Cunard's ocean liner Franconia.  In October 1935, it was introduced by June Knight in the Broadway musical Jubilee, produced at the Imperial Theatre in New York City.

A Beguine was originally a Christian lay woman of the 13th or 14th century living in a religious community without formal vows, but in the creole of the Caribbean, especially in Martinique and Guadeloupe, the term came to mean "white woman", and then to be applied to a style of music and dance, and in particular a slow, close couples' dance. This combination of French ballroom dance and Latin folk dance became popular in Paris and spread further abroad in the 1940s, largely due to the influence of the Porter song.

Based on the title dance, the song is notable for its 108-measure length, departing drastically from the conventional thirty-two-bar form. Where a typical "standard" popular song of its time was written in a fairly strict 32-measure form consisting of two or three eight-measure subjects generally arranged in the form A-A-B-A or A-B-A-C, "Begin the Beguine" employs the form A-A-B-A-C1-C2 with each phrase being sixteen measures in length rather than the usual eight. The final "C2" section is stretched beyond its 16 measures an additional twelve bars for a total of 28 measures, with the twelve additional measures providing a sense of finality to the long form.

The slight differences in each of the "A" sections, along with the song's long phrases and final elongated "C2" section at the end, give it unique character and complexity. The fact that the song's individual parts hold up melodically and harmonically over such a long form also attests to Porter's talent and ability as a songwriter.

Musicologist and composer Alec Wilder described it in his book American Popular Song: The Great Innovators 1900–1950 as "a maverick, an unprecedented experiment and one which, to this day, after hearing it hundreds of times, I cannot sing or whistle or play from start to finish without the printed music ... about the sixtieth measure I find myself muttering another title, End the Beguine."

[montage]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovs3WuWwvwI



I've Got You Under My Skin" is a song written by Cole Porter. Written in 1936, the song was introduced in the Eleanor Powell MGM musical Born to Dance, in which it was performed by Virginia Bruce.

It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song that year. It became a signature song for Frank Sinatra and, in 1966, became a top 10 hit for The Four Seasons. The song has been recorded by many leading pop artists and jazz musicians over the years.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fygeRcO_yls

"It's De-Lovely" is one of Cole Porter's hit songs, originally appearing in his 1936 musical, Red Hot and Blue.

It was introduced by Ethel Merman and Bob Hope. The song was later used in the musical Anything Goes, first appearing in the 1962 revival where it was sung by Hal Linden and Barbara Lang. The hit records in late 1936 and early 1937 included versions by Eddy Duchin, Shep Fields, and Will Osborne. Kitty Brown also recorded the song with Les Brown's Band of Renown.

The song played with words that have the prefix "de", which leads to the creation of the neologism "de-lovely": "It's de-lightful, it's de-licious, it's de-lovely."

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Anything Goes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7kXW2pwMO0

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WX_fKVWX2s

"Night and Day" is a popular song by Cole Porter that was written for the 1932 musical Gay Divorce. It is perhaps Porter's most popular contribution to the Great American Songbook and has been recorded by dozens of musicians.

Fred Astaire introduced "Night and Day" on stage. His recording of the song with the Leo Reisman orchestra was a No. 1 hit, topping the charts of the day for ten weeks. He performed it again in the 1934 film version of the show, renamed The Gay Divorcee, and it became one of his signature songs.

There are several accounts about the song's origin. One mentions that he was inspired by an Islamic prayer when he visited Morocco. Another account says he was inspired by the Moorish architecture of the Alcazar Hotel in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

The song was so associated with Porter that when Hollywood filmed his life story in 1946, the movie was entitled Night and Day.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T6SG0t9jfQ

I Get a Kick Out of You" is a song by Cole Porter, which was first sung in the 1934 Broadway musical Anything Goes, and then in the 1936 film version.

Originally sung by Ethel Merman, it has been covered by dozens of prominent performers, including Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. A cover in 1995 won the 1996 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement with Accompanying Vocal(s) for arranger Rob McConnell.

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T4 - Cole Porter - Begin The Beguine TY