Cole Porter Books

You're the Top is the song that I wrote my own words for. The reason is that it was my Valentine present to the woman that would eventually become my wife. I used phrases that related to our specific history and had it sung to her by the piano player who entertained at one of our favorite restaurants. There were a lot of jealous women that night and I finally got a positive answer to my proposal. It certainly is a love song all you need is the right mix of people and words. Also from Minneapolis.

THIS is NOT a romantic song. This song was sung in "Anything Goes," and it is sung by two characters who are not romantically involved, and will never be romantically involved. It is a fast beat with funny lyrics. When I was involved in a performance of this, I found this song (among two others) to be one of the funniest in the show. No romance here. Just a great song.

I disagree! Although it was originally intended to instill laughs - this song lives on to become a great expression of love, ADMIRATION, and sheer charm. The book itself is beautiful-the images accompanied by the song lyrics capture the song's spirit amazingly well. I gave this as a gift to my fiancé and he was delighted (we're even having the song as our 1st dance in our wedding because of it!). This book is a fantastic, unique gift ideal to give to your most loved. It is a thing of beauty.

It is ok for a child. I personally think teaching chords at the beginning is the better way to teach keyboard. I learned guitar by learning chords at the beginning and I feel the same method should be used for piano and keyboard.

Grade 2/3 with nice arrangements. The only problem I have with this series of song books (I have several)is that the music is printed too close to the binding, so you have to nearly break the binding for the book to stay open when used. Wire binding and/or larger pages would be a big help.

I had ordered this as a gift for my mother for her birthday. When it arrived, it was in perfect condition and my mother, a huge Cole Porter fan, absolutely adored it.

How could you forget to say that this is only the piano part? No lyrics are included! The Best of Cole Porter without the words!!!

The "Best of Cole Porter" far exceeded my expectations for beautiful music. The arrangements are complex enough for the advanced pianist, but also easily practiced by the beginner. The songs selected, are a delight.

An excellent comprehensive discography. This includes old and rare recordings. Finding old and rare recordings might prove difficult and/or completely impossible, but you will know what to look for. A complete reference for collectors (and libraries/researchers).

He hid his obscure background. He emerged into a society which was pegged for him! And he lived to tell about it -- as did his friends.

This is a collection of recollections about the inimitable Cole Porter, straight from the horses' mouths -- his family, his friends, his collaborators (which he denied having! Cole didn't see any reason not to write words AND music for everything!). It is witty and sad, frank and frivilous and fun. For insight into the life and talent of the man who gave us the songs we hum daily, we sing in the shower, and we spout lines from as if they were common knowledge, this is the source! A highly recommendable read, to be sure -- especially for those who love the music and sophisitication of the era!

WILLIAM McBRIEN has done it;he has given all the PORTER fans of this world the biography they were waiting for for thirty-four years.What this book gives us is an accurate account of the composer's life including his well known homosexuality, even if he married for respectability.PORTER's early years were quite different when compare with the other composers of his generation;he had a millionnaire grandfather and a rather aloof father with whom he didn't really communicate.He led a rather easy going life until he finally decided at the age of 37 to let his talent bloom on BROADWAY.There is considerable irony to the fact that from his riding accident in 1937,that man who had everything suffered a great deal until his death in 1964.You end up knowing what was this thing called love.

Night and Day this is the best biography of the great Cole Porter (1891-1964). Porter was the scion of a wealthy family from Peru, Indiana. As a lad he excelled in music making and
graduated with a degree from Yale University. After a year of Law School at Harvard the travel loving Porter journeyed to Paris. He wed Linda Lee Thomas a wealthy woman several years his senior. Porter was gay and the marriage to Linda was sexless. The couple did love one another and Porter was never the same following Linda's death in 1954.
Porter wrote one fabulous musical after another for over 40 years. He lived in luxury with staff to attend his every need. He had a wide circle of friends from among the cultural and literary elite but was an aloof, fastidious, secretive man. Porter was a hard man to know and this biography is about as close as we will ever get to the inner core of the composer.
Porter was a genius in the witty line, the fetching tune and had the ability to make Broadway take notice during his fabulous career.
His life was placid but painful following his fall from a horse and the amputation of a leg. He was alcoholic and probably took durgs.
McBrien is an English professor who has written a well cratede book rich in anecdote. The book is well illustrated with photos from the Porter legacy. Several of Cole's famed lyrics are recorded to the delight of the reader.
With the new movie on Cole Porter this is a good supplement to the film. Well recommended.

Cole Porter (1891-1964) determinedly created the image of an extremely wealthy man who traveled the world, played with the rich and famous, and now and then wrote a Broadway show or two for the pure pleasure of it. But although he was in some respects a shallow man who lived largely for personal pleasure, he was also a very driven and complex one, a man whose fame on the stage did not come easily and who faced a series of horrific hurdles in his private life.

Porter risked his grandfather's ire--and the family fortune he controlled--by settling on a career in music, and while he earned early fame at Yale through his compositions, his first Broadway venture, See America First, was a humiliating fiasco. Homosexual in an era when it was flatly unacceptable, he would marry to retain respectability and forge a remarkable emotional (if completely platonic) relationship with wife Linda Lee Thomas--even while conducting a series of same-sex affairs that would prove frustratingly superficial. Near the height of his career, a horseback riding accident would leave him crippled and in physical agony for the rest of his life, and the pressures of pain and keeping up appearances would plunge him into fits of depression that seemed to border on the psychotic.

Biographer William McBrien is meticulous in his research and his recreation of Porter's very high society, and in other hands such a weight of knowledge might plunge a book into absolute impenetrability--but although McBrien sometimes errs by flooding the reader with inconsequential detail, by and large he keeps a fine balance on his very difficult subject, tracing the arc of Porter's life from Indiana to Yale to New York to Europe to Hollywood, tracing the arc of his career from the humiliating fiasco of Porter's first Broadway show "See America First" to the brilliance of such successes as "Anything Goes" and "Kiss Me Kate."

In the process McBrien not only seems to capture Porter, but an entire era as well--a world of sharp sophistication when terms like "star" and "toast of two continents" and "gentlemen" still had meaning, when the "have-nots" danced to the tempo of the "haves" and the wealthy went slumming for a thrill. Filled with numerous photographs and large chunks of Porter's memorable lyrics, this is one biography that truly does its subject justice.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

I suppose the challenge of reading a biography is slogging through the parts of the person's life in which you have little interest. As a musical theatre performer, I was most interested in the chapters devoted to the genesis of Porter's shows - to me, these were the most interesting, and seemingly well researched. The rest of it, particularly his early life, did not quite spark my interest. I did find the ending chapters - dealing with Cole's descent into melancholy and illness - to be touching. I did gain some insight into the glamorous world of Mr. Porter's time - quite the polar opposite to the Great Depression and WWII. In the sense that I admire books that give me a glimpse into a world different from my own, I liked it.

I was more curious about Cole Porter's life because I, too, am in love with the lyrics and music he created. Songs like ANYTHING GOES, YOU'RE THE TOP, I LOVE PARIS to name a few are classics to no end. I like a book that takes me back in time, but I'd prefer a good story. I was a bit disappointed how the book became too informational with naming of who's who and who did what vs. a classic story. There are definitely stories behind the stories that would be much more interesting...so, I suppose we have to use our imagination. This book is a great resource to anyone studying about Cole Porter. I had no idea about his horse accident which really put a damper on his lifestyle. He was quite the world traveler in the 20s & 30s which is quite an accomplishment in those days. He definitely had a way with words...but if you read this...complement it with a CD of the COLE PORTER Songbook. It took me a while to get through this because it IS a book that you can put down & keep on your coffee table for a long time (before you pick it up again).

Aside from the fact that this book does not contain several great songs, it does not open properly on the piano making it difficult to turn the pages and keep the book open.

The songs are written for an intermediate level pianist and they are arranged nicely. I am only giving this four stars because many of Cole Porter's best-loved songs are not included. For example, there is nothing from "Anything Goes" and "Kiss Me Kate". It is disappointing that so many gems were left out. On the plus side, the biography is nice and there are some nice photos.

ALL OF YOU, ALLEZ-VOUS-EN GO AWAY, AS ON THROUGH THE SEASONS WE SAIL, AT LONG LAST LOVE, BEGIN THE BEGUINE, BETWEEN YOU AND ME, BUT IN THE MORNING NO, CA C'EST L'AMOUR, C'EST MAGNIFIQUE, COULD IT BE YOU, DO I LOVE YOU, DOWN IN THE DEPTHS, EASY TO LOVE, EV'RY TIME WE SAY GOODBYE, EV'RYTHING I LOVE, FAR AWAY, FARMING, FRIENDSHIP, FROM ALPHA TO OMEGA, FROM THIS MOMENT ON, GET OUT OF TOWN, GOODBYE LITTLE DREAM GOODBYE, I AM LOVED, I CONCENTRATE ON YOU, I GET A KICK OUT OF YOU, I HATE YOU DARLING, I LOVE PARIS, I LOVE YOU, IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT, IT'S ALL RIGHT WITH ME, IT'S DE-LOVELY, I'VE GOT YOU UNDER MY SKIN, I'VE STILL GOT MY HEALTH, JUST ONE OF THOSE THINGS, KATIE WENT TO HAITI, LET'S BE BUDDIES, LET'S DO IT, LET'S NOT TALK ABOUT LOVE, LOVE FOR SALE, MAKE IT ANOTHER OLD FASHIONED PLEASE, MIND IF I MAKE LOVE TO YOU, MOST GENTLEMEN DON'T LIKE LOVE, MY HEART BELONGS TO DADDY, NIGHT AND DAY, OURS, RIDIN' HIGH, SO NEAR AND YET SO FAR, STEREOPHONIC SOUND, TRUE LOVE, USE YOUR IMAGINATION, WELL DID YOU EVAH, WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED LOVE, WHERE OH WHERE, WOULDN'T IT BE FUN, YOU DON'T REMIND ME, YOU'D BE SO NICE TO COME HOME TO, YOU'RE SENSATIONAL, YOU'RE THE TOP, a short biography with pictures and a show-film chronology.

I enjoyed the music featured in this book, however I did not feel that it highlighted the best music from an absolutley hilarios score.

This music highlights the old version of Kiss Me Kate before the Broadway revival! It is great for auditions for soprano voices. There are one or two songs for the alto voice. Very clear in marking who is the singer. I found this book to be full of great songs at a reasonably good value. The book is written in fairly large print so they are easy to read when singing.

"Experiment" which is on the soundtrack cd is not included. Mistake. Otherwise the few songs I "messed" with so far on guitar seem to be accurrate.

Considering this book is by a musician and professor of music, it contains surprisingly few insights into what was unique about Cole Porter's lyrics and music, and does little to set his work within a musical context. From time to time the author embarks on embarrassing little journeys into pop psychology of the 'Was Porter's homosexuality an attempt to find a significant father figure in his life? We may never know.' variety. The quality of the writing is disappointing. At one point Schwartz describes a meeting between Cole Porter and Louis Mayer, the movie mogul. Schwartz describes Mayer as 'literally oozing with charm', or some such. Unfortunately, this is typical of the standard of writing throughout the book.

I was disappointed that there were none of the wonderful verses for these songs. As far as I am concerned, this is not a book for professionals!!