Love For Sale

Composed by Cole Porter
Arr. by Pete Myers

Olympia Jazz Senators
Norm Wallen - Director

00:45 Solo No. 1
Richard Lopez - Trombone
Joe Baque - Piano
Dave Shriver - Bass
Chuck Oldright - Drums

Nickelbys Restaurant*
Tumwater, WA
March 17, 2007
   • Olympia Jazz Senators Big Band Live at Nic...  

02:01 Solo No. 2
Richard Lopez - Trombone
Drew Gibbs – Piano
Bill Duris – Bass
Dale Drenner – Drums

Trospers Bar & Grill
Tumwater, WA
July 31, 2006

03:13 Solo No.3
Richard Lopez - Trombone
Drew Gibbs – Piano
Bill Duris – Bass
Dale Drenner – Drums

04:22 Full Band

Jazz Senators:
Gary Scott^ – Alto Sax, Soprano, Flute, Clarinet
Steve Munger – Alto Sax, Flute
Mark Thome – Tenor Sax, Clarinet
Scott Duncan^ – Tenor Sax, Flute, Clarinet, Piccolo
Derek Nelson – Bari Sax, Clarinet

Andy Omdahl – Lead Trumpet
Ben McDonald – Trumpet
Barry Caldwell – Trumpet
Dave McCrary^ – Trumpet

Peter Klinzman – Lead Trombone
Richard Lopez – Trombone
Bill Dyer – Trombone
Martin Woodruff – Bass Trombone

Drew Gibbs – Piano
Bill Duris – Bass
Dale Drenner^ – Drums

Trospers Bar and Grill
Tumwter, WA
August 7, 2006
   • Olympia Jazz Senators Big Band "Summer Ses...  
^solos

Recorded by Norm Wallen and Richard Lopez*
Summer Sessions 2006

Video Concept/Design by Richard Lopez

https://rlo11.wordpress.com/

This video is Fair Use: a use permitted by copyright statute Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research.

Note: "Cole Porter’s “Love for Sale” stands as one of the most unsettling indictments of moral decay ever placed on the Broadway stage. Written for the 1930 musical revue The New Yorkers, the song does not merely shock through subject matter; it exposes a society so spiritually exhausted that it has normalized the open commodification of intimacy. Sung by the prostitute Mae Jones, the number functions as a stark moral X-ray of Jazz Age New York, revealing the corrosive consequences of a culture that treats love, dignity, and human connection as market goods.

Within The New Yorkers, Mae Jones occupies a paradoxical role. She is both a product of the society portrayed and a devastating contributor to its ongoing decay. Her livelihood depends upon the transactional reduction of love to a purchasable service, stripped of emotional truth or ethical restraint. The lyrics of “Love for Sale” make no attempt to soften this reality. Love is advertised with the blunt cynicism of a street hawker, offered to anyone—“old love, new love, every love but true love”—who is willing to pay. This absence of “true love” is the song’s moral core, signaling that authenticity has no place in a world governed by appetite and money.

Mae Jones’ lifestyle reflects the spiritual bankruptcy of the society around her, yet it also accelerates that bankruptcy by reinforcing the idea that desire requires no responsibility, intimacy no commitment, and pleasure no conscience. Her profession thrives precisely because the social elite depicted elsewhere in the musical—politicians, financiers, social climbers—have already abandoned moral discipline. The song reveals a vicious cycle: society creates the conditions that make Mae’s trade profitable, and her trade, in turn, validates society’s moral surrender.

In this context, Mae Jones is not a romanticized figure of rebellion or empowerment. Porter’s lyrics emphasize emotional fatigue rather than defiance. The tone is weary, detached, and almost funereal. Love has become something she sells not because she values it, but because it has lost all intrinsic meaning. This emotional numbness is itself a symptom of cultural rot. Mae is not celebrating decadence; she is surviving within it, even as her survival perpetuates it.

The significance of “Love for Sale” within The New Yorkers lies in its refusal to allow the audience moral distance. While Mae is the one openly selling love, the song implicates the entire society portrayed in the revue. The political bribery, social maneuvering, and hollow romantic arrangements elsewhere in the show are simply more respectable forms of the same moral transaction. Mae’s honesty makes her role especially damning: she exposes, through her very existence, the hypocrisy of a culture that condemns her while indulging in identical exchanges under different names.

Ultimately, “Love for Sale” crystallizes The New Yorkers’ bleak moral vision. It portrays a society in which decadence is no longer shocking but routine, and where love—once a moral and emotional anchor—has been fully absorbed into the marketplace. Mae Jones stands as both victim and vector of this collapse, her song serving as a grim warning of what remains when desire is severed from responsibility and culture abandons its ethical core."

#trombone #jazz #olympia #tumwater