from Showboat

“Can’t help lovin’ dat man”

“Ol’man river“

Before Show Boat the American musical scarcely existed. There was no shortage of popular musical theatre in the major cities but most of it was either imported from Europe or written by American composers in the same style. The situation began to change round about the time of the First World War, not least by way of Jerome Kern’s collaborations with P.G. Wodehouse for the Princess Theatre in New York. Even so, in spite of the occasional hit song like “They didn’t believe me” and “Bill” in his early shows, it wasn’t until Kern worked with Oscar Hammerstein II on Show Boat, which was first seen in Washington and New York in 1927, that the authentic American musical achieved was born.

Based on recent novel by Edna Ferber, Show Boat inevitably reflects the racial attitudes of its time. The two black characters – Queenie, a servant, and her man Joe, a worker on the boat – both occupy socially subservient roles. Music of the black community is, however, an essential ingredient in the score. “Can’t help lovin’ dat man,” sung by the show boat’s leading lady Julie La Verne, is instantly recognised by Queenie as a song only “coloured folks” sing – an observation which foreshadows the disastrous discovery that Julie is in fact of mixed origin and therefore illegally married to her leading man Steve Baker. Written almost as an afterthought when Kern and Hammerstein realised they needed something striking to end the first scene, Joe’s “Ol’man river” was probably not intended to be the protest song which, largely by way of its long association with Paul Robeson, it has since become.