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{{short description|Song by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, from the 1927 musical play Show Boat}}
"'''Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man'''" with music by [[Jerome Kern]], and lyrics by [[Oscar Hammerstein II]], is one of the most famous songs from their classic 1927 [[musical play]] ''[[Show Boat]]'', adapted from [[Edna Ferber]]'s 1926 novel.
Its musical composition entered the public ___domain on January 1, 2023.<ref>[https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2023/ Public Domain Day 2023]</ref>
==Context==
[[File:TillCloudsRollBy01.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[Lena Horne]] as Julie Laverne singing the song in a mini-production of ''[[Show Boat]]'' in ''[[Till the Clouds Roll By]]'' (1946), a fictionalized biography of composer [[Jerome Kern]]. ]]
The song, written in a [[blues]] tempo, is sung in the show by several characters, but is most closely associated with the character [[Julie Dozier|Julie]], the biracial leading lady of the showboat ''Cotton Blossom''. It is Julie who is first heard singing the song – to Magnolia, the daughter of Cap'n Andy Hawks and his wife Parthenia (Parthy), owners of the showboat. In the musical's plot, the number is supposed to be a song familiar to African-Americans for years, and this provides one of the most dramatic moments in the show. When Queenie, the black cook, comments that it is strange that light-skinned Julie knows the song because only black people sing it, Julie becomes visibly uncomfortable. Later, we learn that this is because Julie is "[[Passing (racial identity)|passing]]" as white – she and her white husband are guilty of [[miscegenation]] under the state's law.
Immediately after Julie sings the song through once, Queenie chimes in with her own lyrics to it, and she is joined by her husband Joe, the black [[stevedore]] on the boat. This is followed by Julie, Queenie, Magnolia, Joe, and the black chorus all performing a song-and-dance to the number.
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==History of performances==
"Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" was strongly associated with 1920s [[torch singer]] [[Helen Morgan (singer)|Helen Morgan]], who played Julie in the original 1927 stage production of ''Show Boat'', as well as the 1932 revival and [[Show Boat (1936 film)|the 1936 film version]].<ref>
The song was performed as a song and [[Tap dance|soft shoe dance]] by actress, singer and dancer [[Jessica Lange]] and actress and dancer [[Drew Barrymore]], accompanied on piano by actor, singer and pianist [[Malcolm Gets]], playing the roles of "Big Edie" [[Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale|Edith Bouvier Beale]] and her daughter "Little Edie" [[Edith Bouvier Beale]] and piano accompanist George Gould Strong, in HBO's 2009 dramatization ''[[Grey Gardens (2009 film)|Grey Gardens]]''<ref>{{cite web|title=''Grey Gardens''|website=IMDb.com|url=https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0758751/|access-date=20 May 2021}}</ref> based on the 1975 documentary ''[[Grey Gardens]]''.
Famous composer and "King of Satire" Tom Lehrer parodied the first two lines of the song in the 1959 song "She's My Girl", with the opening lines: "Sharks gotta swim, and bats gotta fly; / I gotta love one woman till I die". In 1965, as part of the album ''[[That Was the Year That Was|That Was the Year that Was]]'', later, he quoted those lines in the song "Pollution": "Fish gotta swim, and birds gotta fly, / But they don't last long if they try".
==Partial song lyrics==
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{{Reflist}}
==Additional references==
* Kreuger, Miles ''Show Boat: The Story of a Classic American Musical'', Oxford, 1977.
{{Show Boat}}
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{{authority control}}
[[Category:Songs from Show Boat]]
[[Category:American songs]]
[[Category:Songs with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II]]
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