Ethel Waters-Miss Otis Regrets Decca Records-78

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Ethel Waters-Miss Otis Regrets Decca Records-78-140-1934....new finds from Toledo Record Show March 10th 2013 "Miss Otis Regrets" is a song by Cole Porter from 1934. It was first performed on stage by Douglas Byng in Hi Diddle Diddle, which opened October 3, 1934 at the Savoy Theatre, London. However, the song was originally written for Ada "Bricktop" Smith[1] to perform.
The song is in the blues style, and Porter's wry take on some common lyrical subject matter of the genre, telling the tale of a woman who comes to a bad end after an encounter with a man. But Porter's peculiar twist is that Miss Otis is a polite society lady, and the story of her last evening is told by her servant after Miss Otis has met her demise. In a few compact lines, the servant reveals how, after being seduced and then abandoned, Miss Otis hunted down and shot her seducer, was arrested, taken from the jail by a mob, and lynched. The servant conveys Miss Otis's final, polite, apologetic words to her friends: "Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today." The song was written after Porter received a challenge while at lunch with some friends. He claimed he could write a song on any subject. The friends challenged him to write something based on the next thing they heard in the restaurant. The waiter at an adjoining table then said to the person at that table "Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today".