A couple of weeks ago we talked a little bit about an American composer named Cole Porter. One of the things I was most surprised to learn as I delved into his story a bit is that along with all the other songs he wrote, he also wrote the song “Don’t Fence Me In.” If I knew that at some point, I’d sure forgotten it. It was Roy Rogers who made it a big hit in 1944.
Porter’s songs have become part of the structure of American culture and have been recorded by jazz and pop musicians from the 1950s to today. In 1956, singer Ella Fitzgerald recorded a double album entitled Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook. There were 32 tunes on it—a good selection of Porter’s output. Norman Granz, Fitzgerald’s manager, visited Cole Porter at the Waldorf-Astoria and played him the album. Porter was said to have remarked, “My, what marvelous diction that girl has.”
Around the same time Charlie Parker recorded a Cole Porter album, as did pianist Oscar Peterson. In 1965, Frank Sinatra released a record full of Cole Porter songs he had recorded over the previous decade. Through the years, other record companies have issued more such albums.
Porter’s songs are usually considered an elemental part of what’s called the “American Songbook.” According to the “Great American Songbook Foundation,” an organization in Indiana, the “Songbook” is made up of the most important and influential American popular songs and jazz standards from the early 20th century that have stood the test of time in their appeal.
Sometimes referred to as “American standards,” the songs published during the Golden Age of this genre from the 1920s to the 1960s were often written for Broadway theatre and Hollywood musicals. The Foundation also manages an ever-growing library and archives.
As a measure of Porter’s continued appeal, in 1990 a group of pop artists including U2, David Byrne, and Annie Lennox, recorded an album of his songs called Red, Hot + Blue that raised money for AIDS research. It was one of the first major AIDS benefits in the Music business and raised over $1 million.
That songs by Porter and others like Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin are usually referred to as a “songbook,” keeps the focus on the songs themselves and not on any particular recording of them. The songs are rightly understood to be far more important in American culture than whoever might happen to be performing them at the moment. Even if it’s Ella.
