Actually, it is exactly the kind of song I expect a guitar student to request. It is the kind of song I expect frat guys in karaoke bars to request. It is also the kind of song I expect a handful of guys playing in a mid-life crisis band in a local bar to want to include in their repetoire.
Other rock musicians? I would expect them to appreciate it as a great rock song, would expect that more than a few would count it among their favorites. It’s just too “on the nose” for a choice of a cover song for anyone not playing weddings.
I agree with your last sentence wholeheartedly; it’s a pretty good analogy. To me JCS is musical theater done using the style of the rock music of the time. Is it rock music? OK, sure. It certainly sounds like rock. But if I was putting together the pit (and incidentally I’ve directed productions of the 2 other mega rock musicals of the 60s/70s “Rocky Horror…” and “Hair”) I would be more interested in a musician’s experience reading sheet music, ability to transpose to meet the needs of the vocalists, ability to bring a damn pencil to make necessary markings in the score so that things don’t have to be repeated every rehearsal, and ability to adapt to the live action, than I would his or her experience playing in rock bands. Despite the similarity in sound between JCS and other 70s rock music, there are really 2 different art forms at work.
Admittedly, the analogy does get fuzzy because rock musicians typically aren’t trained, while many experienced jazz musicians can and do work in musical theater and vice versa.
This is also where the analogy between rock and jazz breaks down. The rock cover band really isn’t so analogous to the jazz combo. Just about every working jazz musician plays from the same book. Every single jazz musician has played “Autumn Leaves”, “All the Things You Are”, and “The Girl From Iponema” 100 times at least. The standard repertoire is far more central to the practice of jazz than in rock, and these jazz standards really serve as the scaffolding for the musicians to improvise within. I certainly have tunes I like better than others but when I’m watching and listening to jazz I’m more interested in how they play than in hearing a particular tune.
Paris in the 30s was a hotbed of Jazz influences, with Pierre Nourry’s Hot Club de France cultivating a love affair with the American music that was sweeping the artistic capitol of Europe.
Unfortunately, very little of the passion of American Jazz improvisation and none of the fire of the Django Reinhardt-style French Hot Jazz was really evident in the Victor-Victoria song in question, though the drummer in the movie version does execute some Gene Krupa-esque licks toward the end of the piece.
It’s a blurry, sort of wasted attempt that is saved primarily by the choreography and the magnetism of Julie Andrews. In answer to the OP, I think the infectious, alluring quality that draws the listener to the piece is actually the swinging rhythm. The tempo is just lively enough to feel it viscerally, and just relaxed enough to be sultry and seductive.