Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II | "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man of Mine," from Show Boat / 1927

my favorite broadway musical songs: “can’t help lovin’ dat man of mine”

by Douglas Messerli

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwpqtLc3wiM

Composers: Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern, Show Boat

Performer: Helen Morgan, 1932

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htv1xyYhO4A

Composers: Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern, Show Boat

Performer: Judy Garland, 1944

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGOyycNqiWA

Composers: Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern, Show Boat

Performer: Ava Gardner, 1951 movie version (sung by Annette Warren)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikAXH7fIgT4

Composers: Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern, Show Boat

Performer: Ella Fitzgerald, Jerome Kern Songbook, 1963

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uWl5vDVc5c

Composers: Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern, Show Boat

Performer: Barbra Streisand

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJgo9UYT0Ik

Composers: Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern, Show Boat

Performers: Kiri Te Kanawa and Nathalie Cole, 1997

 

Poor Julie La Verne, a singer on the Cotton Blossom show boat, who is not only told that she can no longer perform on the boat because of being partly black, but soon after loses, Steve, the man, as she explains to Magnolia, daughter of the boat’s owner, Cap’n Andy Hawks, that she can’t help lovin’ until she dies. Is it any wonder that by play’s end she has become a destitute alcoholic?

    In the original 1927 premiere Helen Morgan sang the role which gives two of the show’s best numbers to her, “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” and “Bill” (not an original song for which Hammerstein retooled the lyrics).

     The better of these two, however, is Hammerstein’s and Kern’s new one, particularly since the work brilliantly sketches a narrative of a woman so desperately in love that she cannot resist what she knows will help to destroy it.

     It’s simply a case of destiny, Hammerstein’s lyrics proclaim, as impossible to change as anything else in nature, including the swim of fish and the flight of birds:

 

Fish got to swim and birds got to fly

I got to love man till I die

Can't help lovin' that man of mine

Tell me he's lazy

Tell me he's slow

Tell me I'm crazy, maybe, I know

Can't help lovin' that man of mine

      

Helen Morgan played Julie again in the 1936 film version, while Ava Gardner sang the song in 1951 film. Since then there have been dozens of interpretations. I’ve chosen just four of them by Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Ella Fitzgerald, and an unlikely pairing of Kiri Te Kanawa and Nathalie Cole from 1997.

 

Los Angeles, January 10, 2018