Lyrical and Musical Features
Rhyming with "daddy" is difficult but Porter characteristically managed it well. One clever rhyme is
| “ | If I invite A boy some night To dine on my fine Finnan haddie, I just adore His asking for more, But my heart belongs to daddy. |
” |
Finnan haddie is smoked fish, and this is one of many innuendoes which appear throughout the song. Sophie Tucker famously advised Mary Martin to deliver such sexy lines while looking towards heaven. Mary Martin's stage persona was quite innocent and so the contrast between her naive manner and the suggestive lyrics accompanied by the provocative striptease made her performance a huge success. Brooks Atkinson, the critic of the New York Times, wrote that Martin's "mock innocence makes My Heart Belongs to Daddy the bawdy ballad of the season".
The original version contains four verses, all of which play on idiosyncratic rhymes with "daddy". The first refers to a game of golf during which she might "make a play for the caddy". The second is about the finnan haddie. The third tells of wearing green with a "Paddy" on St Patrick's day. The final verse is about a varsity football match where one might meet a "strong under-graddy". In the original version she ends up saying that her daddy might "spank" her if she was "bad".
Referring to the melody, especially the passage of "da da da da"s, Oscar Levant described it as "one of the most Yiddish tunes ever written" despite the fact that "Cole Porter's genetic background was completely alien to any Jewishness."
Read more about this topic: My Heart Belongs To Daddy
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