Showboat (1932, 1946)

Show Boat shares something with the Mississippi River so central to its story: it never flows the same way twice.

Perhaps more than any other work in modern theatre, Show Boat has varied with each new incarnation, due to changes in political or dramatic fashion. Lyrics have been rewritten, songs dumped or added, scenes juggled and characters reconceived.

This recording reflects three of the various versions of the score which have come down to us over the years since Show Boat opened on Broadway on 27 December 1927.

Actually, the musical began its journey to New York three and a half years earlier, with an appropriately theatrical setting.

Author Edna Ferber was on the road with a play of hers which was then called Old Man Minick. After a spectacularly unsuccessfully première in New London, Connecticut, producer Winthrop Ames tried to cheer up Ferber and the company with a whimsical notion.

'Next time,' he said,'I won't go out of town with a show. I'll just let it play on a show boat.' 'What's a show boat?' asked Ferber and history was made.

Ames went on to explain to her that since shortly after the Civil War, large especially equipped riverboats had been sailing up and down the Mississippi river, presenting comedies, melodramas and variety shows to the people in the riverside towns.

Ferber instantly saw this as a setting for one of those sweeping historical romances that had made her famous and in 1926 Show Boat was published to great critical acclaim as well as huge popular sales.

One of the people to read it with particular interest was Jerome Kern. The successful composer of such Broadway hits as "Sally"and "Sunny"was always on the lookout for his next project. Before he had finished more than a few chapters, he called up Oscar Hammerstein II, one of his favourite collaborators, and told him he had found their next vehicle.

Hammerstein shared Kern's enthusiasm for the work and almost at once the pair of them were outlining scenes and conceiving songs for their proposed show.

The only problem was that they didn't have the rights to Ferber's novel.