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THE GREAT AMERICAN SONGBOOK

JEROME KERN

SHOW BOAT: “CAN’T HELP LOVIN’ DAT MAN”

In this clip from the 1936 Universal movie musical, note the “blue” notes in the vocal and orchestral line, redolent of early jazz. Hattie McDaniel would win an Oscar three years later for her performance as Mammy in “Gone With the Wind.” This was Robeson’s first major role outside of “B” pictures. Irene’s shuffle, the predecessor to Michael Jackson’s “moonwalk,” would either infuriate a black audience today for cultural misappropriation or provoke it to hysterical laughter. It was taken seriously as art in 1936.

Helen Morgan, Hattie McDaniel & Paul Robeson: “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man”

“It was taken seriously as art in 1936.”

As someone born and raised deep in the Jim Crow era, who never went to school with a black person, or ate in a restaurant with a black person before college, I don’t think so.

I think different people took it different ways. The Hollyweird left took it as support for integration, and some in the South saw it as a white woman acting like the blacks out of rebelliousness. Others in the South probably saw it as a white woman acting like the blacks for comedic effect.

All my life white America has been adopting things the blacks came up with. Hell, most of my mother’s life, too. Jazz, jitterbug, swing, rock and roll (which is slang for “dance and copulate”), blues, every kind of slang and dancing, modes of dress, and a lot more.

The conventional wisdom is that all this has greatly contributed to a flowering of the arts. Blacks have claimed that they “gave whites their bodies back” with their kind of dancing. You know, diversity, man-o-chevitz.

Others see all this as the continual degradation of Western Civilization.

Look around at what we have now. If you’re old enough, think back to what we had. If you’re not, try to find out what we used to have. Better, or worse? (I’m speaking of cultural matters, not STEM.)