Character in a musical, then, is an effect of song character as
well as book character. There are pairs of lovers in most musi-
cals, but their song characters are of different kinds. “All er
Nothin’,” sung by Will Parker and Ado Annie in Oklahoma!,
lets us recognize character at the same time as we recognize
syncopation, which is one of the ways character comes across
in a number. The melody of this tune works by one pattern of
repetition while the rhyme scheme works by another. “With
me it’s all er nuthin’!” depends on an alternation of major and
minor thirds that is repeated in the second line (“Is it all er
nuthin’ with you?”), the fifth line (“No half-and-half romance
will do!”), the tenth line (“If you cain’t give me all, give me
nuthin’ ”), and the eleventh line (“And nuthin’s whut you’ll git
from me!”). The rhyme scheme connects lines two and five
(you/do), lines seven and eight (type/pipe), and lines nine and
eleven (be/me), while off-rhymes link lines three and four (be-
tween/then) and hint at the “nuthin’ ” that itself joins lines one
and ten. Ado Annie’s “Not even sumpin” sets up the exact rep-
etition of lines eleven and thirteen (“nuthin’s whut you’ll git
from me!”) with which the song ends. There are other patterns
running through this ditty, but the point is that the layers of
repetition combine into differing overlaps that syncopate in
their interaction.
That broad syncopation has always been true of the Ameri-
can popular song, but the invention of ragtime around the turn
of the twentieth century made the device explicit in the synco-
pated music itself. The result was syncopation that could be
danced, and with the beat of ragtime giving rise a generation
later to the equally danceable beat of swing, the American pop-
ular song became a classic form.
With me it’s all er nuthin’!
Is it all er nuthin’ with you?
It cain’t be “in between”
It cain’t be “now and then”
No half-and-half romance will do!
I’m a one-woman man,
Home-lovin’ type,