Five Best Books on American Songwriters

1. “In 1926,” William McBrien writes, “Cole [Porter] told Richard Rodgers that in order to have hit songs, ‘I’ll write Jewish tunes.’ ” Rodgers laughed but soon found that Porter, who discovered a gift for composing plangent melodies, was serious. “Just hum . . . any of ‘Begin the Beguine,’ or ‘Love for Sale,’ or ‘My Heart Belongs to Daddy,’ ” Rodgers wrote in his memoir. With his inherited millions, Porter could have easily lived a life of coddled idleness in Europe, which was more tolerant of homosexuality than the America of the 1920s and ’30s. Instead he became the towering genius he was meant to be. McBrien’s perfectly pitched biography, sympathetic but unsparing, captures all the contradictions of this vain, brilliant, physically courageous man who once said, “There must be opulent audiences for [my] brittle and sparkling songs and lyrics, most of which . . . concern themselves with people who do smart and expensive things.” But McBrien acquits Porter of superficiality: “No matter how slick their veneer,” he writes, “Porter’s songs almost always are centered in the sweetness and brevity of love and happiness.”