"Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" with music by Jerome Kern, and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, is one of the most famous songs from their classic 1927 musical play Show Boat, adapted from Edna Ferber's 1926 novel.

Its musical composition entered the public domain on January 1, 2023.

The song, written in a blues tempo, is sung in the show by several characters, but is most closely associated with the character Julie, the biracial leading lady of the showboat Cotton Blossom. It is Julie who is first heard singing the song – to Magnolia, the daughter of Cap'n Andy Hawks and his wife Parthenia (Parthy), owners of the showboat. In the musical's plot, the number is supposed to be a song familiar to African Americans for years, and this provides one of the most dramatic moments in the show. When Queenie, the black cook, comments that it is strange that light-skinned Julie knows the song because only black people sing it, Julie becomes visibly uncomfortable. Later, we learn that this is because Julie is "passing" as white – she and her white husband are guilty of miscegenation under the state's law.

Immediately after Julie sings the song through once, Queenie chimes in with her own lyrics to it, and she is joined by her husband Joe, the black stevedore on the boat. This is followed by Julie, Queenie, Magnolia, Joe, and the black chorus all performing a song-and-dance to the number.

The last refrain of the song is briefly reprised at the end of the first act by the ensemble, as Magnolia and riverboat gambler Gaylord Ravenal enter a local church to get married.

The song makes one last appearance in Act II of the show, when Magnolia uses it as an audition piece while trying to get a job as a singer in the Trocadero nightclub after Ravenal has deserted her. From backstage, Julie, now the featured star there after having been forced to leave the show boat by the local sheriff, hears Magnolia sing the song. Now an alcoholic as a result of having been abandoned by her own husband, Julie secretly quits her job so that the manager, in dire need of a singer for New Year's Eve, will have no choice but to hire Magnolia.

"Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" was strongly associated with 1920s torch singer Helen Morgan, who played Julie in the original 1927 stage production of Show Boat, as well as the 1932 revival and the 1936 film version. While Morgan was alive, she "owned" the song as much as Judy Garland owned "Over the Rainbow" (from The Wizard of Oz). However, Morgan died prematurely in 1941. Her recordings are seldom played or reissued today and her films are infrequently seen. Finally, the 1936 film version of Show Boat was taken completely out of circulation in 1942 to make way for MGM's 1951 remake, which featured Ava Gardner as Julie (with singing dubbed by Annette Warren). Therefore, modern audiences unfamiliar with the 1936 film have most likely never heard Helen Morgan's performance of the song, though various recordings of her singing it are available online.

The song was performed as a song and soft shoe dance by actress, singer and dancer Jessica Lange and actress and dancer Drew Barrymore, accompanied on piano by actor, singer and pianist Malcolm Gets, playing the roles of "Big Edie" Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter "Little Edie" Edith Bouvier Beale and piano accompanist George Gould Strong, in HBO's 2009 dramatization Grey Gardens based on the 1975 documentary Grey Gardens.