Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Cole Albert Porter was born into wealth on June 9, 1891 in Peru, Indiana. His musical training began at an early age, learning the violin at age six, the piano at eight and wrote his first operetta, with help from his mother at 10. His father, an amateur poet, may have influenced his son’s gifts for rhyme and meter. He matriculated through Yale writing student songs went on to Harvard law, switched to the music faculty, where he studied harmony and counterpoint.
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 most successful Broadway composers, Porter wrote both the lyrics and the music for his songs.
After a serious horseback riding accident in 1937, Cole 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 1947 he made a triumphant comeback with his most successful musical, Kiss Me Kate.
Porter wrote numerous songs that have come to be jazz standards such as Night and Day, Anything Goes, I Get A Kick Out Of You and I’ve Got You Under My Skin, It’s De-Lovely, Begin the Beguine, Just One of Those Things and In The Still of the Night. He also composed scores for films from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Cole Porter, composer and lyricist, noted for his sophisticated, suggestive lyrics, clever rhymes and complex forms, contributed to the great American songbook, passed away of kidney failure on October 15, 1964.
Put A Dose In Your Pocket
More Posts: composer,songwriter
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Irving Gordon was born in Brooklyn, New York on February 14, 1915 and as a child, studied violin. After attending public schools in New York City, he went to work in the Catskill Mountains at some of the resort hotels in the area. While working the resorts, he took to writing parody lyrics to some of the popular songs of the day. He has been credited with writing “Who’s On First” made famous by Abbott and Costello, according to his son William.
In the 1930s, he took a job with the music-publishing firm headed by talent agent Irving Mills, at first writing only lyrics but subsequently writing music as well. Together they wrote two songs for Duke Ellington, Please Forgive Me and Prelude To A Kiss and co-wrote Blue Prelude with Ellington.
After writing Mister and Mississippi, a Patti Page hit, Irving decided he enjoyed puns on state names, and some years later wrote Delaware, a Perry Como hit. He also went on to write for Bing Crosby, Eddy Arnold and Billie Holiday. But he is perhaps best known for his song, “Unforgettable” recorded by Nat King Cole in 1951 and then three Grammys in 1992 by his daughter Natalie Cole, in which Gordon himself received a Grammy. Nat’s version was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000.
In the 1940’s he moved to Los Angeles where he spent the rest of his life continually writing and composing and is noted for his contribution in music and lyrics of the Americana genre. Songwriter Irving Gordon passed away in his home of cancer on December 1, 1996.
More Posts: songwriter