What Is This Thing Called Love?

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What Is This Thing Called Love? is a song Cole Porter wrote for his musical Wake Up and Dream , which premiered in 1929. The song became a pop song, hit the charts several times, became one of Porter's most famous songs and is still played today as a jazz standard .

Content and structure of the song

The song answers the question of what love is and why it exists with "sober, if not to say: cynical insights." Because, since love often hurts, the question arises, "what is the point of this institution anyway." The melodrama of the text is supported by a rather harsh, chromatic melody that oscillates between major and minor .

According to Porter, a traditional Moroccan dance inspired him to compose What Is This Thing Called Love? with its unusual harmonies. The song is written in the song form A-A'-BA ". Twelve notes (bbgg, b-as, as-as-gg. Dis-e) form the theme of the first A part, in which the basic question of the song is presented becomes: “What is this thing called love, this funny thing called love.” The chord progression is unusual : The song, notated in C major, begins on the diminished sept above G minor and leads via F minor to an E above the basic chord The B part varies the A part exaggerated by a fourth .

Impact history

The song was first interpreted by Elsie Carlisle at the premiere of the musical on March 27, 1929 in London . Wake Up and Dream was performed 263 times in London. From December 1929 the musical was also produced on New York Broadway , but with less success than in Great Britain. There Frances Shelley sang What Is This Thing Called Love?

The first recording of What Is This Thing Called Love was made by Leo Reisman and his orchestra with the vocalist Lew Conrad. Her version of the song reached number 5 on the American charts on February 15, 1930. Further recordings followed in the same year and confirmed the hit potential of What Is This Thing Called Love : Ben Bernie reached number 10 and Fred Rich number 19 in the American charts.

Later recordings also followed on from these successes:

  • Artie Shaw and His Orchestra (1939, # 15)
  • Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra (with singer Connie Haines, 1942, # 13)
  • Les Paul (Instrumental, 1948, # 11).

The way to the jazz standard

James P. Johnson recorded the piece as a piano number as early as 1930; Art Tatum followed him with various solo and combo recordings. Numerous other pianists improvised on the unusual harmonies, such as Nat King Cole , Teddy Wilson , Oscar Peterson , Red Garland , Dave Brubeck , George Shearing , Bill Evans ( portrait in Jazz , 1959), Hampton Hawes and McCoy Tyner . Guitarists like Django Reinhardt (1947, 1949), Tal Farlow (1955) and Jimmy Raney (1981) were also attracted by the song.

For the winds, on the other hand, the song first became interesting in modern jazz , but then "on the broadest front." The song is already performed very quickly in the all-star jams in Los Angeles. Also in the 1956 recording by Clifford Brown , Sonny Rollins and Max Roach , the song serves as a stepping stone in “breakneck uptempo solos”. In 1969, the piece was a starting point for the jam sessions at Jazz at the Philharmonic , which Dizzy Gillespie , Clark Terry and Zoot Sims improvised. Through its function at jam sessions, the song also got into the program of singers such as Helen Merrill or Ella Fitzgerald ( Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook , 1956). Also, Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra ( In the Wee Small Hours , 1954) sang the piece also of Coleman Hawkins (with Harry Sweets Edison , 1964), the The Pasadena Roof Orchestra (1973) or Wynton Marsalis was interpreted (1991). Bobby McFerrin received a Grammy for his interpretation in 1986 .

Bebop Head

Few Broadway standards have been reinterpreted as frequently as What Is This Thing Called Love? . Its harmony sequence forms the basis of the following bebop heads :

Charles Mingus in particular played with the different versions: in 1954, for the Jazz Composers Workshop, he combined Porter's Song with Dameron's Hot House and Dizzy Gillespie's Woody 'n You.In his arrangement What Love from 1960, Mingus (together with Eric Dolphy ) used free jazz stylistic devices a.

Use in film

The song What Is This Thing Called Love? was used in the following films:

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Charles Schwartz Cole Porter: A Biography 1979
  2. ↑ a b c d e H.-J. Schaal Jazz-Standards , p. 530ff.
  3. ↑ a b c d song portrait at jazzstandards.com
  4. ^ Arnold Shaw: The Jazz Age: Popular Music in the 1920's . Oxford University Press US ,, 1989, ISBN 0195060822 , p. 248.
  5. ↑ 1937, 1943, 1950
  6. ↑ Despite early recordings by Louis Armstrong or, at a slower pace, by Sidney Bechet (with Charlie Shavers , 1941)
  7. ↑ 1947 with Al Killian , Russ Freeman and Barney Kessel , 1952 with Ben Webster , Charlie Parker , Johnny Hodges , 1954 with Max Roach, Clifford Brown and Clark Terry
  8. ↑ Its harmonies match those of What Is This Thing Called Love? match.
  9. ^ Adam Harvey, Dick Hyman The Soundtracks of Woody Allen: A Complete Guide to the Songs and Music in Every Film, 1969-2005 2007, pp. 164f.
  10. ^ Adam Harvey, Dick Hyman The Soundtracks of Woody Allen 2007, p. 73