Cole Porter

Cole (Albert) Porter
(b Peru, IN, 9 June 1891; d Santa Monica, CA, 15 Oct 1964). American songwriter.

His parents were wealthy and his mother, Kate, an accomplished amateur pianist, arranged for him to learn violin from the age of six and piano from the age of eight at the Marion Conservatory, Indiana. Porter began writing melodies – The Bobolink Waltz (1902) for piano was his first published work – and contributed words and music for amateur shows at the Worcester (Massachusetts) Academy (1905–9) and for the Dramatic Club at Yale University (1909–13). He sang with and conducted the university glee club and wrote two songs, Bingo Eli Yale and Bulldog, which remained popular as Yale football songs. For a time he studied law, but in 1915–16 studied harmony and counterpoint at Harvard University. In 1915 two of his songs were performed on Broadway (‘Esmerelda’ in Hands Up and ‘Two Big Eyes’ in Miss Information) and in 1916 he had his first Broadway show, See America First, a ‘patriotic comic opera’ modelled on Gilbert and Sullivan; all these shows were failures.