Yes, My Darling Daughter is a 1940 song by Jack Lawrence first introduced by Dinah Shore on Eddie Cantor's NBC RED Network radio program on October 24, 1940. It was Shore's first solo record. Dinah's version, released on the RCA owned Bluebird Records label, peaked at #10 on Billboard Magazine's Best Seller chart. The music used by Lawrence is based on a Ukrainian folk-song "Oi ne khody, Hrytsju", often ascribed to the Ukrainian songstress Marusia Churai. It first appeared in the 1812 vaudeville "The Cossack-Poet" by the Italian composer Catterino Cavos. This melody is unknown before Cavos, and is assumed that it was written by him.
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The text of the Ukrainian folk song "Oi ne khody, Hrytsiu" was first published in English translation in London in 1816. A Polish translation first appeared in 1822 in Lviv and a German translation appeared in 1848. Evidence exists to the songs popularity in France (1830's), Czech, Slovak lands, Belgium and the United States.
Musical structure
Israeli musicologist Yakov Soroker posited the end of the first melodic phrase of "Oi ne khody Hrytsiu" (Yes my Darling Daughter) contains a "signature" melody common in Ukrainian songs in general which he calls the "Hryts sequence" and gives a list of hundreds of Ukrainian folk songs from the Carpathians to the Kuban that contain this particular sequence. His estimation, after studying Z. Lysko's collection of 9,077 Ukrainian melodies was that 6% of Ukrainian folk songs contain the sequence.
Other scholars have also addressed the unique character and expressiveness of the Hryts sequence, such as Alexander Serov, who stated that "the refrain exudes a spirit of freedom that transports the listener to the steppes and is mixed with the sorrow of some unexpected tragedy."
Soroker notes the Hryts signature was used by composers Joseph Haydn (String Quartet no. 20, op. 9, no. 2; String quartet no. 25, op. 17, no 1; The Saviour's Seven last Words on the Cross, the Rondo of the D major Piano Concerto [composed 1795], Andante and variations for piano [1793]), Luigi Boccherini (duet no. 2), Wolfgang A. Mozart (Symphonia concertante K. 364), L. van Beethoven, J. N. Hummel, Carl Maria von Weber, Franz Liszt (Ballade d'Ukraine), Felix Petyrek, Ivan Khandoshkin, and others.
Notable recordings
It was also recorded by: