FolkWorld #53 03/2014
© Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stephen Foster

The 150th anniversary of his death calls for a reminiscence: Stephen Foster, America's first great songwriter!

ANGELINA BAKER

Angeline the baker lives in our village green
The way I always loved her beats all you ever seen

   Angeline the baker, her age is forty-three
   I bought her candy by the peck, and she won't marry me

Her father is the miller, they call him Uncle Sam
I never will forget her, unless I take a dram

Angeline is handsome, Angeline is tall
They say she sprained her ankle a-dancing at the ball

She can't do hard work because she is not stout
She bakes her biscuits every day, and pours the coffee out

I'll never marry no other girl, no matter where I go
I said I'd marry Angeline just twenty years ago

The last time I saw her was at the county fair
Her father run me almost home and told me to stay there

 Listen to Angelina Baker from:
    Barcelona Bluegrass Band, The Unwanted

 Watch Angelina Baker from:
    The Oldtime Stringband, The Unwanted 

CAMPTOWN RACES

De Camptown ladies sing dis song -- Doo-dah doo-dah
De Camptown racetrack five miles long -- Oh doo-dah day
I come down dah wid my hat caved in -- Doo-dah doo-dah
I go back home wid a pocket full of tin -- Oh doo-dah day
 
   Gwine to run all night! Gwine to run all day
   I'll bet my money on de bob-tail nag
   Somebody bet on de bay

De long tail filly and de big black hoss
Dey fly de track and dey both cut across
De blind hoss sticken in a big mud hole
Can't touch bottom wid a ten foot pole

Old muley cow come on to de track
De bob-tail fling her ober his back
Den fly along like a rail-road car
Runnin' a race with a shootin' star

Seen dem flyin' on a ten mile heat
Round de race track, den repeat
I win my money on de bob-tail nag
I keep my money in an old tow-bag

 Listen to Camptown Races from:
    Last Orders, Ulster Scots Folk Orchestra

 Watch Camptown Races from:
    Johnny Cash, Al Jolson

HARD TIMES COME AGAIN NO MORE

Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears
While we all sup sorrow with the poor
There's a song that will linger forever in our ears
Oh hard times come again no more

   Tis the song, the sigh of the weary
   Hard Times, hard times, come again no more
   Many days you have lingered around my cabin door
   Oh hard times come again no more

While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay
There are frail forms fainting at the door
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say
Oh hard times come again no more

There's a pale drooping maiden who toils her life away
With a worn heart whose better days are o'er
Though her voice would be merry, 'tis sighing all the day
Oh hard times come again no more

Tis a sigh that is wafted across the troubled wave
Tis a wail that is heard upon the shore
Tis a dirge that is murmured around the lowly grave
Oh hard times come again no more

 Listen to Hard Times from:
    Ronnie Drew & Eleanor Shanley, Rig the Jig

 Watch Hard Times from:
    Emmylou Harris, De Danann, Kate & Anna McGarrigle

MY OLD KENTUCKY HOME

The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home
'Tis summer, the darkies are gay
The corn-top's ripe and the meadow's in the bloom
While the birds make music all the day
The young folks roll on the little cabin floor
All merry, all happy and bright
By 'n' by Hard Times comes a-knocking at the door
Then my old Kentucky home, goodnight

   Weep no more my lady
   Oh! weep no more today
   We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home
   For the Old Kentucky Home far away

They hunt no more for the possum and the coon
On meadow, the hill and the shore
They sing no more by the glimmer of the moon
On the bench by the old cabin door
The day goes by like a shadow o'er the heart
With sorrow, where all was delight
The time has come when the darkies have to part
Then my old Kentucky home, goodnight

The head must bow and the back will have to bend
Wherever the darky may go
A few more days, and the trouble all will end
In the field where the sugar-canes grow
A few more days for to tote the weary load
No matter, 'twill never be light
A few more days till we totter on the road
Then my old Kentucky home, goodnight

 Watch My Old Kentucky Home from:
    Red Wine, Crystal Gayle

OH! SUSANNA

I come from Alabama with my Banjo on my knee
I’se gwine to Lou’siana my true lub for to see
It rain’d all night de day I left, de wedder it was dry
The sun so hot I froze to def—Susanna, dont you cry

   Oh! Susanna, do not cry for me
   I come from Alabama, wid my Banjo on my knee

I jump’d aboard the telegraph and trabbeled down de ribber
De lectrie fluid magnified, and kill’d five hundred Nigger
De bullgine bust, de hoss ran off, I really thought I’d die
I shut my eyes to hold my bref—Susanna, dont you cry

I had a dream de udder night, when ebry ting was still
I thought I saw Susanna dear, a coming down de hill
De buckweat cake was in her mouf, de tear was in her eye
I says, I’se coming from de souf, -- Susanna, dont you cry 

 Listen to Oh! Susanna from:
    Éamonn Coyne, Pete Seeger, Ulster Scots Folk Orchestra,
    Damaris Woods

 Watch Oh! Susanna from:
    John McEuen, Trapp Family, Al Jolson, James Taylor

OLD FOLKS AT HOME

Way down upon de Swanee Ribber, far, far away
Dere's wha my heart is turning ebber
Dere's wha de old folks stay
All up and down de whole creation sadly I roam
Still longing for de old plantation
And for de old folks at home

   All de world am sad and dreary
   Ebrywhere I roam
   Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary
   Far from de old folks at home

All round de little farm I wandered when I was young
Den many happy days I squandered
Many de songs I sung
When I was playing wid my brudder, happy was I
Oh, take me to my kind old mudder
Dere let me live and die

One little hut among de bushes, one dat I love
Still sadly to my memory rushes
No matter where I rove
When will I see de bees a-humming all round de comb?
When will I hear de banjo strumming,
Down in my good old home?

 Listen to Old Folks At Home from:
    Ulster Scots Folk Orchestra

 Watch Old Folks At Home from:
    Pete Seeger, Stephen Griffith, Bing Crosby

Stephen Collins Foster (July 4, 1826 – January 13, 1864), known as the "father of American music", was an American songwriter primarily known for his parlour and minstrel music. Foster wrote over 200 songs; among his best known are "Oh! Susanna," "Camptown Races," "Old Folks at Home," "My Old Kentucky Home," "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair," "Old Black Joe," and "Beautiful Dreamer." Many of his compositions remain popular more than 150 years after he wrote them.

Early life and education

Foster attended private academies in Allegheny, Athens and Towanda, Pennsylvania. He received an education in English grammar, diction, the classics, penmanship, Latin and Greek, and mathematics. In 1839, his elder brother William was serving his apprenticeship as an engineer at nearby Towanda and thought Stephen would benefit from being under his supervision. The site of the Camptown Races is 30 miles from Athens, and 15 miles from Towanda. Stephen attended Athens Academy from 1839 to 1841. He wrote his first composition, Tioga Waltz, while attending Athens Academy, and performed it during the 1841 commencement exercises; he was 14. It was not published during the composer's lifetime, but it is included in the collection of published works by Morrison Foster. In 1842, Athens Academy was destroyed in a fire.

His education included a brief period at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania (now Washington & Jefferson College). His tuition was paid, but Foster had little spending money. Sources conflict on whether he left willingly or was dismissed; but, either way, he left Canonsburg to visit Pittsburgh with another student and didn't return.

During his teenage years, Foster was influenced greatly by two men. Henry Kleber (1816–1897), one of Stephen’s few formal music instructors, was a classically trained musician who emigrated from Darmstadt, Germany, to Pittsburgh and opened a music store. Dan Rice was an entertainer, a clown and blackface singer, making his living in traveling circuses. Although respectful of the more civilized parlor songs of the day, he and his friends would often sit at a piano, writing and singing minstrel songs through the night. Eventually, Foster learned to blend the two genres to write some of his best-known work.

Career

In 1846, Foster moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and became a bookkeeper with his brother's steamship company. While in Cincinnati, Foster penned his first successful songs—among them "Oh! Susanna," which became an anthem of the California Gold Rush—in 1848–1849. In 1849, he published Foster's Ethiopian Melodies, which included the successful song "Nelly Was a Lady", made famous by the Christy Minstrels. A plaque marks the site of Foster's residence in Cincinnati, where the Guilford School building is now located.

Christy Minstrels: Camptown Races

Then he returned to Pennsylvania and signed a contract with the Christy Minstrels. It was during this period that Foster would write most of his best-known songs: "Camptown Races" (1850), "Nelly Bly" (1850), "Old Folks at Home" (known also as Swanee River, 1851), "My Old Kentucky Home" (1853), "Old Dog Tray" (1853), and "Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair" (1854), written for his wife Jane Denny McDowell.

Many of Foster's songs were of the blackface minstrel show tradition popular at the time. Foster sought, in his own words, to, "...build up taste ... among refined people by making words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order." Many of his songs had Southern themes, yet Foster never lived in the South and visited it only once in 1852 by river-boat voyage on his honeymoon on his brother Dunning's steam boat the Millinger, which took him down the Mississippi to New Orleans.

Foster attempted to make a living as a professional songwriter and may be considered innovative in this respect, since this field did not yet exist in the modern sense. Due in part to the limited scope of music copyright and composer royalties at the time, Foster realized very little of the profits his works generated for sheet music printers. Multiple publishers often printed their own competing editions of Foster's tunes, paying Foster nothing. He received $100 ($2,653 in 2012 dollars) for Oh, Susanna.

Foster moved to New York City in 1860. About a year later, his wife and daughter left him and returned to Pittsburgh. Beginning in 1862, his fortunes decreased, and as they did, so did the quality of his new songs. Early in 1863, he began working with George Cooper, whose lyrics were often humorous and designed to appeal to musical theater audiences. The Civil War created a flurry of newly written music with patriotic war themes, but this did not benefit Foster. During this time he composed a series of Sunday School hymns, including "Give Us This Day" (1863).

Later life and death

Foster had become impoverished while living at the North American Hotel at 30 Bowery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York. He was reportedly confined to his bed for days by a persistent fever; Foster tried to call a chambermaid, but collapsed, falling against the washbasin next to his bed and shattering it, which gouged his head. It took three hours to get him to Bellevue Hospital. In an era before transfusions and antibiotics, he succumbed three days after his admittance, aged 37.

Eastman Johnson: Negro Life at the South (popularly known as Old Kentucky Home), 1859

His worn leather wallet contained a scrap of paper that simply said, "Dear friends and gentle hearts," along with 38 cents in Civil War scrip and three pennies. Foster was buried in the Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh. One of his most beloved works, "Beautiful Dreamer," was published shortly after his death.

Legacy

Music

Foster is acknowledged as "father of American music." He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970, and he was also inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2010.

"My Old Kentucky Home" is the official state song of Kentucky, adopted by the General Assembly on March 19, 1928. "Old Folks at Home" is the official state song of Florida, designated in 1935. Because of the racial lyrics, it was modified with approval from the Stephen Foster Memorial. After a lengthy debate, the modified song was kept as the official state song, while Florida (Where the Sawgrass Meets the Sky) was added as the state anthem.

American baritone Nelson Eddy recorded 35 Foster songs over three recording sessions in July, August and September 1947 on Columbia Records, in 78 format, 2 songs per record. Columbia issued these recordings in 1948 as "Nelson Eddy in Songs of Stephen Foster (Volume 1: A-745 and Volume 2: A-795)". In 2005 Jasmine Records compiled all 35 Foster songs in one CD, "Nelson Eddy Sings The Stephen Foster Songbook", JASCD 421. "In these performances, arranger/conducter Robert Armbruster made every attempt to frame Nelson Eddy's voice with a simple, yet colorful, orchestral and choral background - the norm of Stephen Foster's time." (Liner notes by Robert Nickora July 2005).

American classical composer Charles Ives freely quoted a wide variety of Foster's songs in many of his own works.

Suwannee River

Douglas Jimerson, a tenor from Baltimore who has released CDs of music from the Civil War era, released Stephen Foster's America in 1998. Just before his death in 2004, singer-songwriter Randy Vanwarmer completed an entire album of Stephen Foster songs. It was released posthumously as Sings Stephen Foster.

Eighteen of Foster's compositions were recorded and released on the Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster collection. Among the artists who are featured on the album are John Prine, Ron Sexsmith, Alison Krauss, Yo Yo Ma, Roger McGuinn, Mavis Staples, and Suzy Bogguss. The album won the Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album in 2005.

Singer/songwriter Syd Straw covered "Hard Times Come Again No More" on her 1989 album "Surprise." The same song (as "Hard Times") appears on Bob Dylan's 1992 album Good as I Been to You.

In 2012, performer and educator Jonathan Guyot Smith, who taught a college course devoted exclusively to the study of Foster's music, released a CD of Foster songs, Stephen Foster Melodies and Serenades for the American Parlor, which contains several seldom-heard Foster songs. The performances are in the style of a 19th-century parlor performance rather than in the manner of a formal concert.

A Squirrel Nut Zippers song titled "The Ghost of Stephen Foster" features references to his most famous works, including "Camptown Races".

Other honors


Lavin / Love: Dreamer –
The Music of Stephen Foster

Movies

Three Hollywood movies have been made of Foster's life: Harmony Lane (1935) with Douglass Montgomery, Swanee River (1939) with Don Ameche, and I Dream of Jeanie (1952), with Bill Shirley. The 1939 production was one of Twentieth Century Fox's more ambitious efforts, filmed in Technicolor; the other two were low-budget affairs made by B-movie studios.

In popular culture


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Foster]. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

Date: February 2014.



Photo Credits: (1) Stephen Foster; (2) Christy Minstrels: Camptown Races; (3) Eastman Johnson: Negro Life at the South (popularly known as Old Kentucky Home), 1859; (4) Suwannee River; (5) Cinzi Lavin & Jennifer Love: Dreamer – The Music of Stephen Foster; (6) Sculpture by Giuseppe Moretti (unknown).


FolkWorld Homepage German Content English Content Editorial & Commentary News & Gossip Letters to the Editors CD & DVD Reviews Book Reviews Folk for Kidz Folk & Roots Online Guide - Archives & External Links Search FolkWorld Info & Contact


FolkWorld - Home of European Music
FolkWorld Homepage
Layout & Idea of FolkWorld © The Mollis - Editors of FolkWorld