Miss Otis regrets (1934)

Every time we say goodbye (1944)

Although it was later incorporated into the 1935 musical Hi Diddle Diddle, “Miss Otis regrets” was written as a song in its own right - apparently to entertain the composer’s friends. Those friends who understood the irony of Porter’s words, however, with their reference to a lynch mob in what one takes to be the American South, would surely not have found it very amusing.

“Every time we say goodbye” and “Wow-ooh-Wolf”are the sole survivors of the Seven Lively Arts revue, which opened at the Ziegfield Theatre in December 1944 and ran for 183 performances. Even so, the difference between them indicates the breadth of Cole Porter’s genius at a time when he was at the height of his powers - and in no mood to duck the harmonic challenge represented by “how strange the change from major to minor” at the end of “Every time we say goodbye.”