“WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED LOVE?” (1929)

In February the Song of the Week will focus on jazz standards with the theme of love, but not love of the sweetly romantic variety. Instead, this month’s songs will feature love on the edge, beginning with Cole Porter’s composition of anguished puzzlement, “What Is This Thing Called Love?”

The song was introduced in the musical revue Wake Up and Dream, which opened in 1929 in March at the London Palladium and in December on Broadway. Wake Up and Dream involved 24 different sets, 500 costumes and a large international cast. “What Is This Thing Called Love?” was given an exotic presentation in the revue, in which Elsie Carlisle, torch-singer style, sang it while dancer Tillie Losch gyrated to the beat of tom-toms in front of an actor dressed as an African idol. The show was moderately successful in London, running for 263 performances, but received mixed reviews on Broadway. The critic for the New Yorker magazine wrote that it was “one of the dullest revues ever put on the local boards.” The stock market had crashed two months prior to its Broadway opening, which adversely affected ticket sales and the show closed after a shortened run.

In spite of the show’s disappointing performance on Broadway, it still served to boost Porter’s burgeoning reputation, thanks to influential newspaper columnist Walter Winchell. In his biography of Cole Porter, The Life that Late He Led, George Eells writes, “Paradoxically, however, the show further established Cole as a songwriter of distinction. Walter Winchell was so taken with “What Is This Thing Called Love?” that he hailed it in his column as a new kind of love song. Although Wake Up and Dream ran only 136 performances, Winchell’s campaign on behalf of that one song left Cole considerably better known than he had ever been before.”

“What Is This Thing Called Love?” has innovative harmonic changes that alternate between major and minor keys, and Porter claimed that the song was inspired by Moroccan native dance. Music critics agree with Winchell in their assessment of the quality of the song. In his book American Popular Song, Alec Wilder claims it “is one of Porter’s best songs and is accepted as such. To begin with, its verse is the first of Porter’s I’ve examined so far which sounds as if it had been given great care and consideration.” Wilder goes on to provide a detailed musical analysis of the unusual chord changes in the song, ending with describing the song’s release as a “wonderful amalgam of superior melodic writing and highly unusual harmony.”

The harmonic changes have attracted hundreds of musicians to the song. At www.jazzstandards.com “What Is This Thing Called Love?” is ranked as the most recorded song that Cole Porter wrote, with “Love for Sale” coming in a somewhat distant second. In his book Popular Standards, Max Morath comments, “Plenty of singers have recorded this Porter Standard, but the jazz instrumentalists outnumber them five to one. Porter was equally inventive with words and music, and in this thirty-two-bar AABA composition, the chord progression is the magnet…” The chord changes have served as the basis for several jazz compositions, including “Hot House” by Tadd Dameron, “Barry’s Bop” by Fats Navarro, “Subconscious-Lee” by Lee Konitz, and “Fifth House” by John Coltrane.

Even though the song is more frequently performed as an instrumental, its lyrics are a perfect fit for the melody. In The Poets of Tin Pan Alley, Philip Furia cites this song as an example of Porter’s ability to write brooding, melodramatic ballads with heavily chromatic melodies. He comments, “What Is This Thing Called Love?,” for example, shifts dramatically between major and minor keys, and Porter fits such tonal ambiguity to a lyric of tormented bewilderment. Yet except for taking a clichéd metaphor “you took my heart” and giving it a brutal, [Lorenz] Hart-like twist, “and threw it away,” the lyric never upstages the music. Instead, Porter tries to find the lyrical equivalents for the musical chromatics – repeating the same sound with different meaning in “one wonderful day,” for example, or twisting the vowel of “saw” through “called” and “Lawd.”

After its introduction on the stage, “What Is This Thing Called Love?” quickly was taken up by jazz musicians and made part of the standard repertoire. It made its first trip to the pop charts eleven months after its debut, when a recording by Leo Reisman and His Orchestra peaked at #5 in February of 1930. Subsequently, it made five more trips to the charts: Ben Bernie and His Orchestra (1930, #10), Fred Rich and His Orchestra (1930, #19), Artie Shaw and His Orchestra (1939, #15), Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra (1942, #13), and Les Paul (1948, #11). While the song was conceived as a ballad, now it usually is performed at a fast tempo. Click here to listen to Charlie Parker’s up-tempo version recorded in 1951 at Birdland:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjouVLwyzC4

Even though up-tempo versions currently are more popular, the song’s lament of love found and then lost and the heartbreaking confusion love can cause are better suited to the original ballad tempo. Click here to listen to Frank Sinatra ask the question, “What Is This Thing Called Love?”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC-vdWONIrw&feature=related

“WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED LOVE?”
By Cole Porter

VERSE
I was a humdrum person
Leading a life apart
When love flew in through my window wide
And quickened my humdrum heart.
Love flew in through my window
I was so happy then.
But after love had stayed a little while
Love flew out again.

REFRAIN
What is this thing called love?
This funny thing called love?
Just who can solve its mystery?
Why should it make a fool of me?

I saw you there one wonderful day.
You took my heart and threw it away.
That's why I ask the Lawd in Heaven above
What is this thing called love?

VERSE
You gave me days of sunshine,
You gave me nights of cheer,
You made my life an enchanted dream
'Til somebody else came near.
Somebody else came near you,
I felt the winter's chill
And now I sit and wonder night and day
Why I love you still?