Tune of the Day: Oh My Darling, Clementine
“Oh My Darling, Clementine” has become popular, especially with Scouts and other groups of young people, as a campfire and excursion song, and there are several different versions of the words.
In his book South from Granada, Gerald Brenan attributes this famous melody to originally being an old Spanish ballad, which was made popular by Mexican miners during the Gold Rush, and given various English texts. No particular source is cited to verify that the song he used to hear in the 1920s in a remote Spanish village was not an old text with new music, but Brenan states in his preface that all facts mentioned in the book have been checked “reasonably well”.
You will notice that at the end of the standard tune we have included a simple coda that can be played as a cadenza before repeating the main theme.