“What is This Thing Called Love?” | Stories of Standards

Tune in to First Take with Lando and Chavis – weekdays from 6-9 am MT – for Stories of Standards to hear our favorite versions of this song all week long!

 

“What is This Thing Called Love?” (1930) by Cole Porter was introduced by Elsie Carlisle (Britain’s “Radio Sweetheart Number One”) in 1929 in the musical revue “Wake Up and Dream”. Cole Porter said this song was inspired by the major/minor key changes of Moroccan native dance. It first made the pop charts in 1930 when Leo Reisman and His Orchestra had a recording which went to #5. Between 1930 and 1948 it went to the charts at least five times, ranging from #10 to #19.

 

Cole Porter (1891-1961) grew up in Indiana in great affluence with an indomitable mother and a pharmacist father. Sent east to Worcester Academy, he later quoted instructor Dr. Abercrombie as saying “Words and music must be so inseparably wedded to each other that they are like one.” Porter wrote around 300 songs while an undergraduate at Yale, including “Yale Bulldog Song” and was voted “most entertaining member” of his graduating class of 1913.

 

Porter’s long string of successes (expatriate life in 1920s Paris, marriage to dear friend and socialite Linda Thomas, composition of Broadway musicals and Hollywood soundtracks) was interrupted by a 1937 fall while horseback riding which shattered both legs and left him with chronic pain for the rest of his life. He dealt with the pain by writing more compositions, with some of his best-loved music written in the 1950s (“Kiss Me Kate” 1948, “Out of This World” 1950, “Can Can” 1953, “Silk Stockings” 1955, “High Society” 1956 and “Les Girls” 1957). Brilliant, witty, complex and original, Cole Porter remains one of the most honored composers of the twentieth century.