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