I'm Just Wild About Harry

"I'm Just Wild About Harry" is a song written in 1921 with lyrics by Noble Sissle and music by Eubie Blake for the Broadway show Shuffle Along. "I'm Just Wild About Harry" was the most popular number of the production, which was the first financially successful Broadway play to have African-American writers and an all African-American cast. The song broke what had been a taboo against musical and stage depictions of romantic love between African-Americans.

Originally written as a waltz, Blake rewrote the number as a foxtrot at the singer's request. The result was a simple, direct, joyous, and infectious tune enhanced onstage by improvisational dancing. In 1948 Harry S. Truman selected "I'm Just Wild About Harry" as his campaign song for the United States presidential election of 1948. Its success in politics led to a popular revival.

Both "I'm Just Wild About Harry" and the show Shuffle Along broke racial taboos. During the early 20th century African-Americans were excluded from most mainstream theater in the United States: white Vaudeville refused to book more than one African-American act on a bill and for over a decade no Broadway show used African-American performers at all. Blake and Sissle met F. E. Miller and Aubrey Lyles for the first time at a fundraising benefit for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1920. Vaudeville's exclusionary practices limited bills to one African-American act per night, so as a result the two leading African-American acting teams knew of each other only by reputation. The four performers agreed that the only feasible way for African-Americans to return to Broadway with dignity would be musical comedy. Miller proposed they collaborate.

The resulting show adapted plot and characters from Miller and Aubrey's Vaudeville comic sketches with music by Blake and Sissle. Although the music of Shuffle Along was new to the public, only three compositions were actually written for the production: "I'm Just Wild About Harry", "Bandana Days", and "Love Will Find A Way". The other songs used in the show were material that Blake and Sissle had tried unsuccessfully to sell to Tin Pan Alley. "I'm Just Wild About Harry" and "Love Will Find a Way" in particular were politically risky for the era.

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