Last evening down on lover's lane she strayed

Song: Miss Otis Regrets (She's Unable to Lunch Today)
Day: 8/23, 8/24
Artist: Cole Porter, Ella Fitzgerald
Source: Ella Fitzgerald sings the Cole Porter Songbook
After a week of perfect weather (and also too much running around to really think about music), a few days of gray have settled in. Last year this would have meant Elliot Smith, right now it means Cole Porter.

Apparently this song was meant as a parody, a comic juxtaposition of gentility and violence. In the version I know best, Ella Fitzgerald's from her song book series, its played straight. Ella makes the song into a great leveler; no matter who you are, what kind of manners or upbringing you have you are subject to the affairs of the heart.

The song itself is an impressive combination of form and lyric. This clash is carried into its form which marries a sereis of very formal announcements "Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today" with what is essentially a blues form of a repeated first line and a closing third that explains everything else. And its really this third line that gets me. This is where all the action happens, and melody highlights it with an unusually wide and bluesy interval jump that underscores Miss Otis's awkward pain that errupts through her otherwise impeccable behavior.