MISS OTIS REGRETS – Ella Fitzgerald
If I had been aware of this song, and I probably was, I don’t remember being really aware of it until I heard it in a really odd setting: some guy – sorry, no idea of his name – who ‘opened’ for Ralph McTell at a concert in the 1980s (St David’s Hall, Cardiff) included this song in his small set. It was his speciality, I think, taking old Great American Songbook standards, and singing them in an semi- folkie setting, to an exquisitely handled acoustic guitar. So, behind the song, the guitar work was all minor sevenths and ninths etc; he brought all the melancholy he could from it; and it was beautiful. And then I heard Ella Fitzgerald’s version of it.
I’m not sure that I would have liked Cole Porter. I’m not even sure where I’ve picked up these impressions, that I have the feeling that he…
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