Miss Otis Regrets

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Miss Otis Regrets
Various recordings
publication 1934 ( WP Hi Diddle Diddle )
length about 4 minutes
Genre (s) Jazz , blues , musical
Author (s) Cole Porter

Miss Otis Regrets is a song by musical composer Cole Porter that was released in April 1934. As part of his revue Hi Diddle Diddle , it was first performed by Douglas Byng at London's Savoy Theater on October 3, 1934 , and has since been recorded by dozens of artists.

background

Cole Porter (1891–1964) spent many vacations in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. Ada "Bricktop" Smith was a close friend to him there, with whom he was a regular guest and whose "modern" performances had a clear influence on the both instructive and crude lyrics of his songs. But contrary to what she claims, and what has been suggested by some newspaper articles, Porter did not write Miss Otis Regrets for Bricktop.

Possibly Porter wrote the title in 1933 for the planned musical Ever More , which was to build on the play The Spell by Lilli Hatvany. Porter supposedly couldn't remember how he got the idea for the piece. According to Charles Schwartze's biography of Porter, the idea of ​​a party in the New York apartment of a fellow student Porter came from his time at Yale , Leonard Hanna. That night they heard a cowboy's lament on the radio and Porter sat down at the piano and improvised a parody of the piece. He retained the minor key of the blues melody and added his ironic interpretation of the typical country theme to the piece as a new text (the regret of being abandoned after being insidiously coerced into sexual submission). Instead of a country girl, Miss Otis became an honorable lady of the upper class. Another friend and Yale classmate, Monty Woolley , helped Porter with the implementation, by miming a butler, his mistress ( Madam - explains why Miss Otis can not appear at the appointed lunch madam): Back in the previous 24 hours Miss Otis had been abandoned by her lover, had unceremoniously located and killed him, had been arrested, imprisoned, sentenced and executed. Immediately before being untied by the mob, she makes an appropriately polite apology as to why she would miss the upcoming date. This joint performance was received so positively that the song was developed with each new performance at subsequent cocktail parties. Several of these celebrations took place in Elsa Maxwell's suite in the Waldorf-Astoria . It was to her that Porter dedicated the song.

The " smart set ", as it regularly came together at those parties, was known for using wits and witty comments to underline anecdotes and gossip, and soon began to use references to Miss Otis as a punchline. In the same year, Porter processed the story as Miss Otis Regrets and published it. The song was first performed publicly in October 1934 by Douglas Byng in the revue Hi Diddle Diddle , which André Charlot showed in the London Comedy Theater .

Miss Otis found her way into the American pop culture dictionary. The popularity and commercial success of the song, which appeared on record in several interpretations in 1934, was reflected in the fact that a year later Al Dubin and Harry Warren integrated an homage to Miss Otis into their song Lulu's Back In Town (written for the 1935 feature film Broadway Gondolier ). In it, a man sings about how he is preparing for his date with his crush Lulu, focusing all his attention on this great girl who has returned to the city after moving away a long time ago: “You can tell all my pets, all my blondes and brunettes, Mister Otis regrets that he won't be around "( You can tell all my pets, all my blondes and brunettes that Mister Otis regrets that he can no longer be around ).

Truman Capote relates the song (in an Esquire article in the November 1975 issue) to a story Porter once told him. After that, Porter used Miss Otis as a punchline in the 1950s to turn away a pushy man at his front door. Porter simply handed him a check and said: “Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today. Now get out. "( Miss Otis apologizes, she can't have lunch today. Now out. )

Recordings

Many of the artists listed below released the song multiple times. Only the first publication is mentioned. The only exception are several very different interpretations of the song by the same artist ( Marlene Dietrich , for example, recorded the song both in the original and in a German translation). In the field of jazz, the discographer Tom Lord lists 119 cover versions of the song.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hi Diddle Diddle In: SecondHandSongs. Retrieved May 30, 2016.
  2. ↑ a b Song search in the Discogs music database. Pages 1-2 (i.e. articles 1-100 of 1076 for relevance sorting), accessed February 24, 2018.
  3. ^ Obituary for Ada "Bricktop" Smith In: Time Magazine . Retrieved May 30, 2016.
  4. ^ William McBrien Cole Porter. Alfred A. Knopf 1998, p. 238
  5. ^ William McBrien Cole Porter , p. 239
  6. ^ Charles Schwartz: Cole Porter: A Biography , Da Capo Press, 1979, ISBN 978-0-306-80097-9
  7. ↑ James Ross Moore (1992): "Cole Porter in Britain". New Theater Quarterly 30 (8): 113-122
  8. ↑ Truman Capote : Cole-Porter-Anecdote.Retrieved from Google Books on May 30, 2016.
  9. ↑ "Miss Otis Regrette" , edith-piaf.narod.ru. Retrieved May 30, 2016.
  10. ↑ Tom Lord : The Jazz Discography (online, accessed February 25, 2018)
  11. ↑ recorded in August 1934
  12. ↑ This song by Edith Piaf - 1946