How are you & that ever increasing family of yours doing?
I captured this pic of a plane banner flying over my home this evening.
It just seemed so random I had to snap a pic! :)
How are you & that ever increasing family of yours doing?
I captured this pic of a plane banner flying over my home this evening.
It just seemed so random I had to snap a pic! :)
He was born in Peru, IN, on June 9, 1891, the only surviving child of a wealthy family. His father, Samuel, was a pharmacist, and his mother, Kate, was the indulged daughter of James Cole, “the richest man in Indiana,” a coal and timber magnate who dominated the family.
His strong-willed mother began his musical training at an early age: he learned the violin at age six, the piano at eight, and wrote his first operetta at ten. His father, a shy and unassertive man, played a lesser role, although as an amateur poet, he influenced his son’s gifts for rhyme and meter. Cole’s father had musical talent as a vocalist and pianist, but the father-son relationship was not close.
The Richest Man in Indiana wanted his grandson to become a lawyer and sent him to the Worcester Academy in Massachusetts in 1905. Cole brought an upright piano with him to school and found that music and his ability to entertain made it easy for him to make friends. He did so well in school that he rarely came home to visit. He became valedictorian and was rewarded by his grandfather with a grand tour of Europe.
Entering Yale in 1909, Cole majored in English, minored in music and studied French. He was an early member of the Whiffenpoofs, an a capella singing group; in his senior year, he was elected president of the Yale Glee Club and was its principal soloist.
Cole wrote 300 songs at Yale, including student songs that are still played today. He wrote musical comedy scores for his fraternity and the Yale Dramatic Society.
After graduating, Cole enrolled at Harvard Law in 1913. He felt that he was not destined to be a lawyer, and at the suggestion of the dean, he switched to the music school where he studied harmony and counterpoint. His mother did not object, but it was kept secret from the Richest Man in Indiana. At Harvard, he wrote five complete musicals for their music and dramatic societies.
In 1915, Cole’s first song on Broadway, “Esmeralda,” appeared in the revue “Hands Up.” Success was immediately followed by failure: his first Broadway production in 1916, “See America First,” a patriotic comic opera modeled on Gilbert and Sullivan, was a flop, closing after two weeks.
In 1917 with World War I, Cole served in the French Foreign Legion in North Africa. He transferred to the French Officers School at Fontainebleau to teach gunnery to American doughboys.
Not to put too fine a point upon it but Cole Porter was gay. Irving Berlin’s song, “I Got Lost in His Arms,” applied to him. He maintained a luxurious apartment in Paris where he entertained lavishly. His parties were extravagant and scandalous, with a lot of homosexual and bisexual activity, Italian nobility, cross-dressing, international musicians and a huge amount of recreational drugs, mostly cocaine. Decadent old Paris was notably tolerant of decadent lifestyles.
In 1918, Cole met Linda Thomas, a rich Louisville-born divorcee, who was eight years his senior. She was beautiful and well-connected socially. The couple shared mutual interests, including a love of travel, and she became his confidant and companion. They married the following year. She knew all about his sexual proclivities, but it was mutually advantageous for them to marry. For Linda, it offered continued social status and a partner who was the antithesis of her abusive first husband. For Cole, it bought a respectable heterosexual front. They were genuinely devoted to each other in their own way and remained married from 1919 until her death in 1954. Linda believed that classical music might be a more prestigious outlet than Broadway for her husband’s talents, and she used her connections to find him suitable teachers, but was unsuccessful. Cole enrolled at the Schola Cantorum in Paris where he studied orchestration and counterpoint with Vincent d’Indy.
The Porters lived the luxurious life of American expatriates in Paris after the war. In 1923, Cole came into an inheritance from the Richest Man in Indiana, and they began living in rented palaces in Venice. In the midst of this extravagant lifestyle, he continued to write songs with encouragement from his wife.
Cole’s songs were interpolated into various revue shows in America and England. He also composed a short ballet, “Within the Quota,” satirically depicting the adventures of an immigrant to America who becomes a film star. Written for the Swedish Ballet, it lasted 15 minutes, was orchestrated by Charles Koechlin, and shared the same opening night as Darius Milhaud’s “The Creation of the World.” It was one of the earliest symphonic jazz-based compositions, predating Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” by four months.
Now settled in New York, Cole had less success with his work on “Greenwich Village Follies.” He wrote most of the original score, but his songs were gradually dropped during the Broadway run, and by the time of the post-Broadway tour in 1925, all his numbers had been deleted. Frustrated by the public response to his work, he nearly gave up song writing as a career, although he continued to compose songs for friends and perform at private parties.
In 1928, he reintroduced himself to Broadway with the musical “Paris,” which became his first hit. This was supposed to have a been a Rodgers & Hart effort, but the guys were unavailable, so Cole got the job.
It features a string of suggestive and funny comparisons, preposterous pairings and double entendres, dropping famous names and events, and drawing from both highbrow and popular culture. Cole was an admirer of Gilbert & Sullivan, whose shows featured similar comic list songs.
The 1920s saw a sexual revolution that stood until the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s shattered everything in its path. The phrase “Let’s do it” was of course a euphemism for sex. This was a pioneering song to declare openly that sex was fun.
The song has lent itself over the years to the regular addition of topical lines. In 1955 the lines “Even Liberace, we assume, does it,” was added, although few at the time knew just what and whom Liberace was doing. Noel Coward, in his performances, even rewrote the song entirely.
This 1929 recording still utilizes a tuba instead of a string bass for the bass line even though electric recording had been introduced five years earlier. That’s Paul Whiteman’s band backing him up. In those days, Bing was working for Whiteman along with Bix Beiderbecke and others who would become jazz legends. In 1929 Bing was not yet America’s favorite crooner; he was still a badass, spending most of his evenings getting roaring drunk with Bix and the boys.
How cool that you were able to get such a great shot....so legible! Good job!!