Mis'ry's Comin' Aroun' is a once-neglected song from the 1927 musical ''

Show Boat ''Show Boat'' is a musical theatre, musical with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It is based on Edna Ferber's best-selling 1926 Show Boat (novel), novel of the same name. The musical follows the lives of the per ...

'' by

Jerome Kern Jerome David Kern (January 27, 1885 – November 11, 1945) was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over ...

and

Oscar Hammerstein II Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II (; July 12, 1895 – August 23, 1960) was an American lyricist, librettist, theatrical producer, and director in musical theater for nearly 40 years. He won eight Tony Awards and two Academy Award ...

. It was cut from the production during the

Washington D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

tryout on the orders of producer

Florenz Ziegfeld Florenz Edward Ziegfeld Jr. (; March 21, 1867 – July 22, 1932) was an American Broadway impresario, notable for his series of theatrical revues, the ''Ziegfeld Follies'' (1907–1931), inspired by the '' Folies Bergère'' of Paris. He al ...

, supposedly because it was one of the factors that made the show too long (it ran four-and-a-half hours when it premiered). However, musical theatre historian Miles Kreuger and conductor John McGlinn, also suggest that it was the dark, dramatic tone of the piece that most concerned Ziegfeld. Kern was reportedly so incensed by the deletion of "Mis'ry's Comin' Aroun'" that he made it the principal motif of Show Boats original overture and asked orchestrator

Robert Russell Bennett Robert Russell Bennett (June 15, 1894 – August 18, 1981) was an American composer and arranger, best known for his orchestration of many well-known Broadway and Hollywood musicals by other composers such as Irving Berlin, George Gershw ...

to work sections of it into the

background music Background music (British English: piped music) is a mode of musical performance in which the music is not intended to be a primary focus of potential listeners, but its content, character, and volume level are deliberately chosen to affect behav ...

as well, where it is now played by the orchestra during some of the dialogue scenes involving the mixed race actress Julie La Verne. The song, which runs about five minutes, is an African-American lament of foreboding and impending doom sung by Queenie, the cook, and the African-American chorus, and, in the show, drives Julie, who has been passing as white, to near hysteria. It is supposed to be sung at the beginning of the rehearsal scene, which contains the sequence in which Julie and her white husband are revealed to be guilty of "

miscegenation Miscegenation ( ) is marriage or admixture between people who are members of different races or ethnicities. It has occurred many times throughout history, in many places. It has occasionally been controversial or illegal. Adjectives describin ...

" by the local sheriff, who tries to arrest them. A fragment of the song's slow section is still actually sung by the black chorus during the scene, as well as in the 1936 film version of the show, but it does not build up to the fever pitch that Kern and Hammerstein originally conceived. In the 1951 film version of the show, an offscreen chorus hums the slow section of the song as Julie and Steve leave the boat, but the words are not sung. The song is not heard at all in the 1929 part-talkie film version. The complete song was not restored to the show's score until

EMI EMI Group Limited (formerly EMI Group plc until 2007; originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At t ...

's exhaustive 1988 3-CD recording of the show's score with its original lyrics, orchestrations and vocal arrangements, and performed onstage complete for the first time since the

tryout of ''Show Boat'' when producer

Harold Prince Harold Smith Prince (born Harold Smith; January 30, 1928 – July 31, 2019), commonly known as Hal Prince, was an American theatre director and producer known for his work in musical theatre. One of the foremost figures in 20th-century theat ...

included it in the 1994 Broadway revival.IBDB: The official source for Broadway Information
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mis'ry'S Comin' Round 1927 songs Songs with music by Jerome Kern Songs with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II