Iowa Stubborn

"Iowa Stubborn" is a song by Meredith Willson from his 1957 musical The Music Man. It is the first sung number in the show and follows the show's unusual spoken opening, "Rock Island". The piece is sung in a schottishe or "soft-shoe" rhythm, and in the lyrics, the reserved and stoic citizens of River City, Iowa seek to persuade an unknown person (who turns out to be Professor Harold Hill) to "give Iowa a try." They sing of their "chip on the shoulder attitude we've never been without that we recall. ... And we're so by God stubborn we can stand touchin' noses for a week at a time, and never see eye to eye."

Nine Iowa cities are named near the end of the song, in the following order:

References

Meredith Willson and Franklin Lacey's The Music Man (1950)

Films	The Music Man (1962) The Music Man (2003)

Songs	"Iowa Stubborn" "(Ya Got) Trouble" "Seventy-Six Trombones" "Goodnight, Ladies" "Shipoopi" "Till There Was You"

Related	"Marge vs. the Monorail" "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean" "Here We Go"

Meredith Willson

Musicals

The Music Man (1957)
The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1960)
Here's Love (1963)
1491 (1969)

Film scores

The Great Dictator (1940)
The Little Foxes (1941)

Compositions

Music Man	"Iowa Stubborn" "(Ya Got) Trouble" "Seventy-six Trombones" "Goodnight, Ladies" "Shipoopi" "Till There Was You"

Other	"May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You" "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" "I See the Moon" "Iowa Fight Song"

The Big Show

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