Bestow’d by The Civil War Roundtable of the Merrimack.
Tag: Stephen Foster (composer)
I’m Off for California (1850s?)
Here’s a song you’ll recognize, and yet… it’s a side of the Gold Rush story you might not have heard about in school: The melody is Stephen Foster‘s first big hit, “Oh Susannah” (1847), ubiquitous in its time and still common in the “folk song” tradition over a century and a half later. Foster’s original composition features two world-changing technologies…
Emerson: “Doo-Dah!” (1997)
Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture
My Old Kentucky Home (Foster, 1853)
Stephen Foster’s anthem recounts “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in three verses.
Ring, Ring De Banjo (Foster, 1851)
Frederick Douglass (1845) ~ “Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears…”
Angelina Baker (Foster, 1850)
Stephen C. Foster ~ Letter to E. P. Christy (May 25, 1852) ~ “As I once intimated to you, I had the intention of omitting my name* on my Ethiopian songs, owing to the prejudice against them by some, which might injure my reputation as a writer of another style of music…”
Old Folks At Home (Foster, 1851)
Stephen Foster’s 1851 song “Old Folks At Home” provides an excellent introduction to the antebellum period:
The Hardtacks 