Cole Porter Songbook

America’s Midwestern maestro Cole Porter was the epitome of style — he lived large and wrote reams of classy, catchy, precision-tooled songs that quickly became standards, sometimes practically before the ink was dry on the staff paper. A dazzling list of legendary voices have relied on Porter’s songbook: his slinky ode to obsession, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” was one of the key weapons in Frank Sinatra’s heart-melting arsenal. Billie Holiday jazzed up Porter’s plea for passion “Let’s Do It” with the kind of sultry swing only Lady Day could bring. But the songsmith himself couldn’t resist crooning his own tunes, and there’s no one on the planet better suited to delivering lines that rhyme “Mahatma Gandhi” and “Napoleon Brandy” on “You’re the Top.”

Uncover Cole’s quirky side with Shakespeare shape-ups and erotic experiments, in Next Steps.

Porter penned songs that mated passion and poetry, and he had a particular knack for tackling everyday topics from odd angles. Mandy Patinkin puts on his professor’s hat when advising an academic approach to the art of amour in “Experiment,” from Porter’s sexy, controversial 1933 show, Nymph Errant. James Whitmore and Keenan Wynn play the part of roughnecks trying to reinvent themselves as budding bibliophiles in “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” from Kiss Me, Kate, which added an entire chapter to the Great American Songbook. And Johnny Hartman’s deep, creamy tones bring full-bodied life to “Down In the Depths,” where a rich man with a lonely soul looks down with woe from his high-rise roost.

A new crew of crafty crooners lights up the Porter legacy, in Deep Cuts.

Vibrant voices have been serving up sizzling takes on Cole Porter’s tunes since the 1920s, but a new generation takes up the torch to interpret his evergreens for the 21st century. British boy wonder Jamie Cullum was just 24 when he bravely followed in Sinatra’s footsteps by swinging his way through “I Get a Kick Out of You” in 2003. Another English heartbreaker, Robbie Williams, was a 20-something, too, when he teamed with Jon Lovitz for a fresh take on the droll Frank/Bing duet from High Society “Well, Did You Evah.” And in ’08, when Natalie Cole crafted a GRAMMY®-winning sequel to her blockbuster album Unforgettable, Porter’s Can-Can paean to temptation “It’s All Right With Me” got a cool, coquette-ish update.

Anytime the roll call of the great American songwriters rings out, right in there among Gershwin, Berlin & co., you’ll inevitably find Peru, Indiana’s favorite son, Cole Porter. Like a lot of his contemporaries, he began on Broadway, penning a stellar string of hit shows, from Anything Goes to Kiss Me, Kate. But with their witty, wily lyrics and gorgeous, graceful melodies, Porter’s stunning stable of songs transcended the stage, becoming standards embraced by one generation after another. Culling the countless visits the world’s most vivacious vocalists have made to his seemingly inexhaustible cache of classics is a daunting task. But we’ve tackled it with gusto to offer you an unforgettable peek at the power behind that Peruvian pen.