Stories of Standards: “I Concentrate on You”

Tune in to Jazz with Victor Cooper – weekdays from 6-9 a.m. MT – for Stories of Standards to hear our favorite versions of this song all week long starting Monday, February 18, presented by Rodney Franks!

Stories of Standards is sponsored by ListenUp - If you love music, you’ll love ListenUp.

Cole Porter wrote, “I Concentrate on You” (1939) for the 1940 film “Broadway Melody of 1940”, where it was first sung by Douglass McPhail. The final entry in MGM’s “Broadway Melody” series, it featured the only on-screen pairing of Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell. The pair also danced to “Begin the Beguine”. In the film, George Murphy is Astaire’s dance partner; unfortunately, a mix-up results in Murphy being given the role intended for Astaire. Murphy’s character shows up drunk and Astaire fills in for him, with Astaire eventually triumphing both on and off-stage. About this time, it is revealed that Murphy wasn’t really drunk; he was just creating an opportunity for Astaire to get these parts. The song was featured in the 1981 Agatha Christie mystery “Evil Under the Sun, which starred Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot.

Cole Porter (9 Jun 1891-15 Oct 1964) began his musical studies as a precocious child (piano and violin) and would practice two hours a day with his mother. In order to mitigate the long hours, she would arrange parodies of popular tunes. Given the prominence of his mother’s family (her father was one of the wealthiest people in the state at the time), it was fairly easy for her to make him seem even more precocious than he actually was, by convincing people he had been born in 1892, rather than 1891. He would later quote Dr. Abercrombie, of Worcester Academy, as saying “Words and music must be so inseparably wedded to each other that they are like one.” While at Yale Porter wrote songs that are still identified with the school; in his time there he wrote 300 songs and six full-scale productions.

Cole’s maternal grandfather J. O. (James Omar Cole) was determined that Cole (J. O.’s only grandson), should go on to practice something “respectable”, such as law, rather than be involved in the arts. While Cole did start attending Harvard Law School, in his second year there he switched from law school to arts and sciences, majoring in music. His grandfather was not informed of this change.

In 1919 Porter became involved with heiress Linda Thomas, a relationship that worked well for both of them most of the time, although there were occasional periods when his flamboyant parties led to scandals and separations. In 1937 one of the most tragic events of his life occurred when the horse he was riding fell and broke both of his legs, one of which was later amputated. Pain from that accident continued for the rest of his life. Despite that Kiss Me, Kate, written in 1948, was his most successful musical and won the first Tony Award for Best Musical.