Uska Dara is a 1953 song by Eartha Kitt

Eartha Kitt

Eartha Mae Kitt was an American singer, actress, and cabaret star. She was perhaps best known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 hit recordings of "C'est Si Bon" and the enduring Christmas novelty smash "Santa Baby." Orson Welles once called her the "most exciting woman in the...

. It is based on the Turkish

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

 folk song Kâtibim about a woman and her secretary traveling to Üsküdar

Üsküdar

Üsküdar is a large and densely populated municipality of Istanbul, Turkey, on the Anatolian shore of the Bosphorus. It is bordered on the north by Beykoz, on the east by Ümraniye, on the southeast by Ataşehir, on the south by Kadıköy, and on the west by the Bosphorus, with the areas of Beşiktaş,...

. Eartha Kitt recorded it with Henri René and his orchestra at Manhattan Center

Manhattan Center

The Manhattan Center building, built in 1906 and located at 311 West 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan, houses Manhattan Center Studios , its Grand Ballroom, and the Hammerstein Ballroom, one of New York City's most renowned performance venues...

, New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, on March 13, 1953. The song was released by RCA Victor Records as catalog number 20-5284 (in USA) and by EMI

EMI

The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...

 on the His Master's Voice label as catalog number B 10573. Kitt's recording sold 120,000 copies when it was first released by RCA Victor in 1953. Kitt later performed the song in the 1954 film New Faces

New Faces (film)

New Faces is a 1954 American film adaptation of the musical revue New Faces of 1952 directed by Harry Horner and sketches directed by John Beal...

and included the song in her cabaret

Cabaret

Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...

 act, where she culminated the number with a belly dance

Belly dance

Belly dance or Bellydance is a "Western"-coined name for a traditional "Middle Eastern" dance, especially raqs sharqi . It is sometimes also called Middle Eastern dance or Arabic dance in the West, or by the Greco-Turkish term çiftetelli...

.