One reader takes me to task for omitting the poignant prologue to last week’s song lyric, Cole Porter’s “Every Time We Say Goodbye”:
We love each other so deeply
That I ask you this, sweetheart,
Why should we quarrel ever?
Why can’t we be enough clever, never to part?
The ever-vigilant James Lindgren also found it “odd” that I suggested Ella Fitzgerald “helped make famous” songs by Porter and Duke Ellington. My point was not that either Porter or Ellington toiled in obscurity prior to Ella’s recordings of their work. To the contrary, I noted that each man’s body of work extended far beyond the songs she recorded or otherwise performed. Rather, my point was that her recordings popularized much of each composer’s work. Indeed, I suspect that Ella’s renditions define some Ellington and Porter songs for many, particularly today. In any event, Prof. Lindgren passed along this link to more on Ella’s recordings of the Duke Ellington and Cole Porter songbooks.
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