spent many holidays in Paris throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Ada "Bricktop" Smith was a close friend, and he frequented her nightclub, Chez Bricktop, whose "modern" performing acts certainly influenced or informed the erudite and dense lyrical content of Porter’s songs. However, despite her assertion and references to that assertion in articles by journalists, Porter did not write "Miss Otis Regrets" for Bricktop.The song began during a party at the New York apartment of Porter's classmate from Yale, Leonard Hanna. Hearing a cowboy's lament on the radio, Porter sat down at the piano and improvised a parody of the song. He retained the referential song’s minor-keyed blues melody and added his wry take on lyrical subject matter common in country music: the regret of abandonment after being deceitfully coerced into sexual submission. Instead of a country girl, however, Miss Otis is a polite society lady. Friend and Yale classmate Monty Woolley jumped in to help Porter "sell it", pretending to be a butler who explains why Madam can't keep a lunch appointment. In the previous 24 hours, Miss Otis was jilted and abandoned, located and killed her seducer, was arrested, jailed, and, about to be hanged by a mob, made a final, polite apology for being unable to keep her lunch appointment. This performance was so well received that the song evolved, "workshopped" with each subsequent cocktail party, many of which were at the Waldorf-Astoria suite of Elsa Maxwell, to whom Porter dedicated the song. The "smart set" that attended these parties, known to use wit or wisecracks to punctuate anecdotes and gossip, began using references to "Miss Otis" as a punchline. Porter incorporated the tale of "Miss Otis Regrets" into Hi Diddle Diddle later that year. Truman Capote, in his article published in the November 1975 issue of Esquire Magazine, relates a story Porter told him. Porter used "Miss Otis" as a punchline in the 1950s, opening the door to dismiss a presumptuous man from his home. Porter handed him a check as he said "Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today. Now get out."
The song is a murder ballad which involves a reversal of roles: a white woman from aristocratic society is lynched after she shoots and kills her lover. Lynching was at the time very widely reported and discussed in the United States, but by far the majority of cases were being carried out against working class male African Americans. The song reverses the gender, class and racial roles to produce an anti-lynching narrative.
Notable versions
Ethel Waters recorded a popular version of the song in New York City in 1934, released before the London debut of Hi Diddle Diddle. This was the only Porter song that Waters ever covered.
