Volume 17 & 18, Number 12 & 1 · January 27, 1972
A Kick Out of Cole
By Robert Mazzocco
Cole
edited by Robert Kimball, with a biographical essay by Brendan Gill
Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 283 pp., $25.00
Cole Porter was the purest of the pop composers. He never had the zest of Gershwin, the melting melodies of Kern, the everyday energy of Richard Rodgers or Irving Berlin. The lofty 'You Are Love' was beyond his ear, the calescent 'Fascinating Rhythm' beyond his beat. Yet of his many successes only 'Blow, Gabriel, Blow' seems, here and there, less a Cole Porter number than a Vincent Youmans number. You can fumble Rodgers for Berlin, Kern for Rodgers, Youmans for Gershwin, if the nightcap's good or the party's a groove, but Porter, generally, whatever the setting, is immediately himself, irresistibly intact.
Review, 1905 words
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