Who Should Sing 'Ol' Man River'?

Who Should Sing "Ol' Man River"?: The Lives of an American Song tells the almost eighty-year performance history of a great popular song. Examining over two hundred recorded and filmed versions of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's classic song, the book reveals the power of performers to remake one popular song into many different guises.

Todd Decker is Associate Professor of Music at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of Show Boat: Performing Race in an American Musical (Oxford, 2013) and Music Makes Me: Fred Astaire and Jazz (2011, winner of the Best First Book Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies). He has lectured widely on American music, including at the Library of Congress, and his articles have appeared in Music, Sound and the Moving Image, The Journal of Musicology, Daedalus, and Contemporary Theatre Review.

1. Some Questions for "Ol' Man River"
2. Robeson's Revisions
3. Ol' Man Rhythm
4. Ol' Man Parody
5. Ol' Man Easy Listening
6. Ol' Man Metaphor
7. Sinatra's Way
8. The High Season on Records
9. The High Season on Television
10. Sons and Daughters of Joe
A Select List of Recorded Versions of "Ol' Man River"
Acknowledgements
Notes
Index