Talk:Ol' Man River

Robeson's Changes to the Lyrics

I'm not sure when Robeson "sang" his version of the lyrics as described in the article, but it was not on the recording of him singing "Ol' Man River" that I have.71.224.204.167 03:24, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

"but the river keeps on rolling on anyway". Don't it? 68.123.140.196 20:06, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Phil Silvers

Comedian Phil Silvers had a routine in which he would portray (solo or with a straight man) composer Jerome Kern teaching singer/collage graduate Paul Robeson how to sing "Old Man River" using dialect over Robeson's objections that it is not proper english. See Phil Silver's "The Laugh's Were On Me". M Bateman-Graham 203.171.196.113 14:01, 8 October 2007 (UTC)muhaha

Octave?

"When prompted, [Bea Arthur] delivers the famous octave drop on the line, 'Get a little drunk, and you land in jail'." The melody drops a fifth, not an octave, on the word "jail". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.86.92.198 (talk) 17:11, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Tote that barge.

Does anyone have any idea what the words mean? For example what is toting a barge? QuentinUK (talk) 07:16, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

A barge is flat-bottomed boat for carrying freight, lacking self-propulsion; "to tote" can mean "to convey or carry or transport" or especially when the object is heavy. So if you want the barge to move upstream or across the river or positioned at dock, it needs to be towed. Canals often have parallel roads to allow mule teams to tow barges. The song Low Bridge introduces a mule named Sal used to haul barges. Dakleman (talk) 08:35, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Ol' Man River/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

The article contains a lot of information and is very useful, but there should be more sources of information. Also there is neither infobox nor images here. And something should be done with the trivial section. Hence I rate it as "Start class"-Betty kerner (talk) 20:41, 11 September 2009 (UTC) I've added an infobox. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 21:46, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Last edited at 21:46, 28 September 2011 (UTC). Substituted at 01:46, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

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Widespread Adoption in Popular Culture

This 1927 song was attributed as "the ancient song of the Southern Negros" in a pamphlet by the publicity committee (chaired by W. C. D'Arcy) of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Association (JNEMA) and reproduced in the Congressional Record. 1934 Congressional Record, Vol. 78, Page 12571 (June 18, 1934) Dakleman (talk) 09:14, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Little to do

"Little to do with the stage version" makes no sense. It's an adaptation of the stage version. Do you mean the movie adaptation made important changes? If so, say so. Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 21:23, 10 March 2022 (UTC)