And the number that made it happen did intentionally put
the blues elements into the pop-song format for Julie to sing.
The conditions that developed in the performance of the num-
ber were established in the number itself, and when that num-
ber expands to include the ensemble, and when the ensemble
swings into the shuffle, and when the white ingénue Magnolia
proves that she has been learning the shuffle too, the basic
conventions of the musical are fully at work. This is complex
theatre.^3
Here is how the chorus to “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man”
works as a melody. The first phrase, “Fish got to swim and
birds got to fly,” has the same lyric meter as the second, “I got
to love one man till I die,” and the two phrases span virtually
the same intervals. The rhyme “fly” and “die” adds lyrical re-
semblance to the musical repetition, and these lines belong to
a stanza, A, whose format is repeated twice, the second repeat
falling after B. The overall structure is AABA, the same as in
“Surrey with the Fringe on Top” and “People Will Say We’re
in Love” from Oklahoma!, “Tonight,” from West Side Story,
“Luck Be a Lady,” from Guys and Dolls, “A Weekend in the
Country,” from A Little Night Music, and thousands of other
show tunes and popular songs. The refrain “Can’t Help Lovin’
Dat Man of Mine” is heard at the end of each A section. By the
time Queenie, Joe, and their cohorts finish singing, the refrain
has been heard seven times, and it is the concluding phrase of
the song, which circles back on itself. It may advance the plot
on one important point, but mainly it circles back on itself and
gains a lift by doing so.
THE DRAMA OF NUMBERS 107
(^3) The interracial casting of Show Boatwas a bold move for the Broadway of
- We could add that the song was also meant to be overheard by a Phi
Beta Kappa graduate and all-American football star from Rutgers, Paul Robe-
son, who was making a reputation singing spirituals in New York instead of
practicing as an attorney after obtaining his law degree from Columbia Uni-
versity. Robeson undertook a concert tour in Europe in 1927 rather than wait
for Show Boatto be finished, and Jules Bledsoe, well established as an opera
and lieder singer, played the role first. Robeson came to the role in the Lon-
don production of 1928, then played Joe in the film. See McMillin, “Paul
Robeson, Will Vodery’s ‘Jubilee Singers,’ and the Earliest Script of the Kern-
Hammerstein Show Boat.”