Sunday, February 17, 2008

You're The Top! (Musical Journey, Part II)

Do do
That voodoo
That you do
So well


That's from Cole Porter's "You Do Something to Me", from 1929 show Fifty Million Frenchmen. Three rhymes in one line - or is it six rhymes? And the line doesn't just rhyme for the sake of rhyming; it falls perfectly into place, the perfect line at the perfect time:


You do something to me,
something that simply mystifies me.
Tell me, why should it be
you have the power to hypnotize me?
Let me live 'neath your spell,
Do do
That voodoo
That you do
So well.
For you do something to me
that nobody else could do


Perhaps no one else in the history of American popular song could have written than line. Or this one:


Flying too high with some guy in the sky is my idea
of nothing to do


Fly, high, guy, sky, my, i-dea, there's six more rhymes in another perfectly placed line. That one is, of course, from "I Get a Kick Out of You" (from the 1934 show Anything Goes.)

Now, Cole Porter has been criticized for rhyming too much. Certainly, when written on the page, his lyrics could appear to be the rambles of some talented though frivolous rhymester run-amuck. But I find it hard to come up with an example of such when the song is sung. Fit to the tune, the lyrics always seem just right. It was part of his genius; fitting the perfect lyric to the perfect tune to fashion the perfect song. And what tunes they were! Cole Porter wrote some of the most memorable melodies of the age, melodies that to this day anyone even slightly versed in American popular culture will immediately recognize. Besides the two gems already mentioned, there's: "Let's Misbehave," "Let's Do It," "I Love Paris," "Night and Day," "I've Got You Under My Skin," "What Is This Thing Called Love?," "Anything Goes," "Just One Of Those Things," "After You, Who?," "You're The Top'" "Love For Sale," "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye," "At Long Last Love," "Begin The Beguine," "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To," "It's De-Lovely," "I Concentrate on You," "In The Still Of The Night," "My Heart Belongs to Daddy," "So In Love" - literally dozens of Porter's songs are mainstays of the American popular songbook.

Furthermore, Porter's songs were of a particular type. New York City songs, I call them. It's an oft-mentioned irony that the farm boy from Indiana came to represent the ultimate in urban sophistication. Listen to Cole Porter and you feel like an uptown cosmopolitan, tooling 'round the city, laughing with the boys, a beautiful dame clinging to your arm. The carefree, man-about-town, je-ne-sais-quoi quality in Porter's songs played a large part in their success. Who else but Cary Grant could have played him in the movies? Of course, that Porter wrote some of the most memorable love songs in the American popular music is another irony, for, though he was happily married to Linda Thomas Porter for 35 years until her death in 1954, Porter was a promiscuous homosexual.

Hollywood recently produced a bio of Porter's life, De-Lovely, starring Kevin Kline. I've yet to watch it and I'm not sure I will - I hear it's nearly complete fiction, and not a very good movie besides. Anyhow, his life is a lot less interesting that his music. No movie about Porter could possibly capture the essence of the man's talent as completely as Helen Merrill singing You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To, or Ella Fitzgerald singing Night and Day, or Sinatra singing What Is This Thing Called Love?

If I've piqued your interest at all, read Stefan Kanfer's excellent summary of the man and his music over at City Journal, the best magazine in America. You won't be disappointed.

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