Words and Music: Happy Birthday, Cole

Today in 1891, in Peru, Indiana, Cole Porter was born.

Anything Fred Astaire sang by him is timeless - like Night and Day:

Like the beat beat beat of the tom-tom
When the jungle shadows fall
Like the tick tick tock of the stately clock
As it stands against the wall

Like the drip drip drip of the raindrops
When the summer shower is through
So a voice within me keeps repeating
You, you, you

Night and day, you are the one
Only you beneath the moon and under the sun
Whether near to me, or far
It's no matter darling where you are
I think of you night and day.

Day and night, why is it so
That this longing for you follows wherever I go
In the roaring traffic's boom
In the silence of my lonely room
I think of you
Night and day

Night and day, under the hide of me
There's an oh such a hungry yearning burning inside of me
And this torment won't be through
Till you let me spend my life making love to you
Day and night, night and day


I really enjoy Rod Stewart's cover of Every Time We Say Goodbye:

Every time we say goodbye, I die a little,
Every time we say goodbye, I wonder why a little:
Why the Gods above me, who must be in the know,
Think so little of me, they allow you to go.
When you're near, there's such an air of spring about it,
I can hear a lark somewhere begin to sing about it,
There's no love song finer,
But how strange the change from major to minor
Every time we say goodbye.

And I'm enormously fond of Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons' cover of (I've Got You) Under My Skin - if you haven't heard it, look it up and give it a listen.

I've got you under my skin.
I've got you deep in the heart of me.
So deep in my heart you're really a part of me.
I've got you under my skin.
I'd tried so not to give in.
I said to myself: this affair never will go so well.
But why should I try to resist when, darling, I know so well
I've got you under my skin?

I'd sacrifice anything come what might
For the sake of having you near
In spite of a warning voice that comes in the night
And repeats and repeats in my ear:
Don't you know, little fool, you never can win?
Use your mentality, wake up to reality.
But each time I do just the thought of you
Makes me stop before I begin
I've got you under my skin.

And Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong's cover of I Get A Kick (Out of You) is fabulous!

My story is much too sad to be told,
But practically everything leaves me totally cold.
The only exception I know is the case
When I'm out on a quiet spree
Fighting vainly the old ennui
And I suddenly turn and see
Your fabulous face.

I get no kick from champagne.
Mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all,
So tell me why should it be true,
That I get a kick out of you?

Some get a kick from cocaine.
I'm sure that if I took even one sniff
That would bore me terrific'ly too
Yet I get a kick out of you.

I get a kick ev'ry time I see
You're standing there before me.
I get a kick though it's clear to me
You obviously don't adore me.

I get no kick in a plane.
Flying too high with some guy in the sky
Is my idea of nothing to do,
Yet I get a kick out of you.