Klaus Döring's Classical Music/Klaus Döring's Klassische Musik

Cole Albert Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964) was an American composer and songwriter. Many of his songs became standards noted for their witty, urbane lyrics, and many of his scores found success on Broadway and in film. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, Porter defied his grandfather's wishes and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn to musical theatre. After a slow start, he began to achieve success in the 1920s, and by the 1930s he was one of the major songwriters for the Broadway musical stage. Unlike many successful Broadway composers, Porter wrote the lyrics as well as the music for his songs. After a serious horseback riding accident in 1937, Porter was left disabled and in constant pain, but he continued to work. His shows of the early 1940s did not contain the lasting hits of his best work of the 1920s and 1930s, but in 1948 he made a triumphant comeback with his most successful musical, Kiss Me, Kate. It won the first Tony Award for Be...

By  Georg Predota, Interlude Cole Porter Credit: http://www-tc.pbs.org/ It’s not easy being the son or daughter of the richest person in the whole wide word! Just ask Kate Cole, daughter of James Omar Cole, at his time, the richest man in the US state of Indiana. Kate was treated like a princess and showered with the most expensive toys, clothes and jewelry. She received the best general education money can buy, and that included very expensive instructions in dance and music. Above all, Kate Cole developed a rather expensive and eccentric taste. When her daddy introduced her to a number of suitable and high-powered businessmen for the purpose of marriage, Kate rebelled. Instead of following her father’s wishes, she married a weak, shy and ineffectual, although moderately successful pharmacist named Sam Porter from her hometown of Peru, Indiana. Daddy Cole was furious, yet considering his esteemed social image, financially subsidized the couple. Living on a generous allowance for t...

Cole Porter was born June 9, 1891, at Peru, Indiana, the son of pharmacist Samuel Fenwick Porter and Kate Cole. Cole was raised on a 750-acre fruit ranch. Kate Cole married Samuel Porter in 1884 and had two children, Louis and Rachel, who both died in infancy. Porter's grandfather, J.G. Cole, was a multi-millionaire who made his fortune in the coal and western timber business. His mother introduced him to the violin and the piano. Cole started riding horses at age six and began to studying piano at eight at Indiana's Marion Conservatory. By age ten, he had begun to compose songs, and his first song was entitled "Song of the Birds". He attended Worcester Academy in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1905, an elite private school from which he graduated in 1909 as class valedictorian. That summer he toured Europe as a graduation present from his grandfather. That fall, he entered Yale University and lived in a single room at Garland's Lodging House at 242 ...