Composed by Charles K. Harris, this sentimental parlor waltz about a tragic lovers' misunderstanding became the music industry's first multi-million-selling sheet music phenomenon, launching the commercial golden age of Tin Pan Alley.
In 1927, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II integrated it into their landmark Broadway musical 'Show Boat'. Sung by Norma Terris (and later recorded by Irene Dunne), the song was structurally recontextualized from a 19th-century drawing-room waltz into an evocative theatrical cornerstone symbolizing the melancholy of the Gay Nineties.
A parlor-waltz megahit was redefined as a dramatic Broadway musical set-piece.