Show Boat |
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Recorded/Released: 1928 Charted: -- Peak: -- Sales (in millions): -- Genre: show tunes |
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Charted: July 21, 1951 Peak: 119 US Sales (in millions): -- Genre: show tunes |
Tracks (Order from Original Show):
Tracks (from 1951 Soundtrack): Song Title (Performers) [time] Click for codes to singles charts.
Singles/Hit Songs: As was common in the pre-rock era, songs from musicals were often recorded by artists not associated with the musical and released as singles. Here are some of the most notable hit singles resulting from Show Boat:
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Rating:  4.443 out of 5.00 (average of 11 ratings from all versions of Show Boat)
Quotable: “Generally considered to be the first true American ‘musical play’” – Wikipedia Awards (Cast Album and Soundtrack): (Click on award to learn more).
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About the Show: Show Boat “is generally considered to be the first true American ‘musical play’.” WK It separated itself from the operettas, light musical comedies, and Follies-type musical revues of the 1890s and early 20th century by telling a dramatic plot-and-character driven story accompanied by music. WK The musical, with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II, was based on Ednar Ferber’s 1926 novel of the same name. WK The show works in a few songs not by Kern and Hammerstein, including Bill, written by P.G. Wodehouse in 1918, but reworked by Hammerstein for Show Boat. Goodbye, My Lady Love by Joseph Howard and After the Ball by Charles K. Harris have become mainstays in the American stage productions of the show as well. WK The show opened on Broadway on December 27, 1927 at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York, where it ran for a year and a half. The 1928 London cast album was released in England before the United States. Since the U.S. had not started making original cast albums of Broadway shows, there was no album made of the 1927 Broadway cast. WK However, for the 1932 revival of the musical, a cast album was made featuring Helen Morgan and Paul Robeson, who were both in the original American and London casts of Show Boat, E-C alongside “James Melton, Frank Munn, and Countess Olga Albani” WK and an orchestra conducted by Victor Young. WK The recordings of “Ol’ Man River and a Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man…are truly authoritative. The…sound is astonishingly good.” E-C The show was revived again in 1946, 1983, and 1994. WK Similarly, cast album recordings have been made multiple times, including 1946, 1956, 1958, 1962, 1966, 1971, 1988, and 1994. It was also made into a movie in 1936 with members from the original Broadway and London productions. It was made into a movie again in 1951 although it “was prettied up considerably and reshaped almost beyond recognition. On the other hand, Howard Keel’s baritone is one of the most pleasing voices in movies of that era, and teamed with Kathryn Grayson’s fluttering alto, the results are beguiling on songs like Only Make Believe.” E-S It “wasn’t treated too seriously by most purists until the 1990s, when it emerged as a minor classic in its own right.” E-S |
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First posted 8/11/2008; last updated 12/21/2021. |
