ol' man riverとは 意味・読み方・使い方

"Ol' Man River" (music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II) is a song in the 1927 musical Show Boat that contrasts African American hardship and struggles of the time with the endless, uncaring flow of the Mississippi River; it is related from the point-of-view of a dock worker on a showboat. It is the most famous song from the show. Meant to be performed in a slow tempo, it is sung completely once by the black dock worker "Joe" who travels with the boat, and, in the stage version, is heard four more times in brief reprises. Joe serves as a sort of musical one-man Greek chorus, and the song, when reprised, comments on the action, as if saying, "This has happened, but the river keeps rolling on anyway."