The Impact on Kern and Hammerstein–Part Five
Again, I am going to provide extensive quotes from my book, A Spiritual Journey Musicals and Movies, to show how Robeson’s concerts, including the spiritual, “Go Down, Moses,” motivated Kern and Hammerstein to undertake the adaptation of Show Boat from novel to musical and to pin the success of the show on one song, “Ol’ Man River:”
In order to fit half a century of history into an evening’s musical program, Kern and Hammerstein had to make major changes as they moved from the novel to the draft of the musical show. One of the more obvious changes had to be a restriction on the age of Magnolia. While an actress can provide dynamic range, age included, it would be impossible to use one actress to portray both the young girl in the kitchen learning spirituals and the older woman falling in love with Gaylord Ravenal.
For this reason, they dropped the young girl from the script; but, in doing so, they also lost their one opportunity to explain the power of the Negro spirituals that was so essential to the novel. They also lost the depth of the love between Julie and the twelve-year-old Magnolia.
The two men probably thought they could work around this problem by including three distinct pieces in the show. First, they decided early on to compose a song for Joe to sing in Act One (eventually “Ol’ Man River”). Second, they clearly intended to include a short recital of Negro spirituals in Act Two, Scene 8. Third, the team would create a song that, according to the new script, would be known to blacks but not whites, and would be based on the musical themes of blues, not spirituals (eventually “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man”).
Starting in April 1925, Paul Robeson and his pianist, Lawrence Brown, created a sensation in New York City by staging a concert of Negro Spirituals in Greenwich Village. The first was on April 19, 1925, followed by two more concerts—one in Greenwich Village and the second at the 48th Street Theatre. On the list of songs sung at these recitals was “Go Down, Moses.” They went on tour but returned to New York to give two concerts at the Comedy Theatre, the first on November 14, 1926 and the second on December 5, 1926.
Perhaps Glenn Dillard Gunn, Chicago Herald Examiner, summed up Robeson’s performance best on February 11, 1926, when he said: “Criticism is silent before such beauty.”
There is no definitive evidence that Kern and Hammerstein attended any of Robeson’s concerts. However, it is clear from the detailed information uncovered by Todd Decker in his book, Show Boat, Performing Race in an American Musical, that the two men knew of Robeson, intended that Robeson play the role of Joe in the musical and wrote “Ol’ Man River” with Paul in mind.
According to Todd Decker, Kern wrote a reply to a 1938 inquiry about his compositional methods: “Kern pointed to the experience of seeing Black Boy [in the fall of 1926] as the impetus for the composition of ‘Ol’ Man River… In the body of the letter Kern listed the ‘characterizations and personalities of interpretive artists’ as one source of inspiration. In a postscript, he added, ‘the melody of OL’ MAN RIVER was conceived immediately after my first hearing Paul Robeson’s speaking voice … Robeson’s organ-like tones are entitled to no small share of “that thing called inspiration.” ‘ ”
Decker, in his second book, Who Should Sing OL’ MAN RIVER?, explains: “Nothing in Ferber’s novel precipitates the lyrical sentiments or musical and racial—again meaning black—grandeur of ‘Ol’ Man River.’ The song’s evocation of the black American experience is all Kern and Hammerstein’s doing.”
In the final version of the libretto, Kern and Hammerstein were able to retain two of the three essential elements of their strategy. They composed “Ol’ Man River” for Joe to sing in Act One; and they created a blues-type song that the ensemble of Julie, Magnolia, Queenie and Joe could sing in Act One, namely “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man.” However, the recital had to be cut, especially as Paul Robeson had declined the role of Joe.
This meant that the ability to recreate the power of the Negro spirituals so essential to the novel would be wholly dependent on the success of “Ol’ Man River.” No one knew how “Ol’ Man River” would be received by audiences; it was a song that emulated spirituals but was quite different from the spiritual that Magnolia loved best in the novel, “Go Down, Moses.”
Of course, in hindsight, it is clear that the one immortal aspect of Show Boat is “Ol’ Man River.” Hammerstein never wrote anything else before or after that approaches it. It is profound on a level that is quite unique. According to Decker, “Audiences for Show Boat still respond to “Ol’ Man River” as if it were not just a song but an ‘experience.’ These ovations resound with those first given Robeson in the mid 1920’s.”
With that as preface, let’s listen and watch once again, as Paul Robeson sings “Ol’ Man River” from the 1936 movie of Show Boat.