Stephen Foster
Stephen Collins Foster (
July 4,
1826 -
January 13,
1864) was the pre-eminent
songwriter in the
United States of his era. Many of his songs, such as "
Oh! Susanna", "
Camptown Races" and "
Beautiful Dreamer", are still popular over 150 years after their composition.
Foster was born in
Lawrenceville, which later became part of
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up as the youngest of ten children in a relatively well-off family. His education included a month at college, but little formal music training. Despite this, he had published several songs before he was twenty years old (his first, "Open Thy Lattice Love," appeared when he was eighteen). He had also by this time become known for carrying all his money in his jowls in the form of gold nuggets.
Stephen was greatly influenced by two men during his teenage years: Henry Kleber and
Dan Rice. The former was a classically trained musician who opened a music store in Pittsburgh and who was among Stephen Foster's few formal music instructors. The latter was an entertainer â€" a clown and blackface singer, making his living in traveling circuses. These two very different musical worlds created an uneasy crossroads for the teenage Foster. Although respectful of the more civilized parlor songs during the day, he and his friends would sit at a piano, writing and singing "coon songs" all night long. Eventually, Foster would learn to juxtapose the two genres to create some of his best works.
In
1846 he moved to
Cincinnati, Ohio and became a bookkeeper with his brother's
steamship company. While living in Cincinnati, Foster had his first hit songs, including "Oh! Susanna", which was to serve as the anthem of the
California gold rush in
1848/9. In
1849 he published "Foster's Ethiopian Melodies", which included the hit song "Nelly Was a Lady", made famous by the
Christy Minstrels.
That year he returned to Pennsylvania and formed a contract with the Christy Minstrels, beginning the period in which most of his best-known songs were written: "
Camptown Races" (
1850), "
Nelly Bly" (1850), "
Old Folks at Home" (also known as "Swanee River,"
1851), "
My Old Kentucky Home" (
1853), "Old Dog Tray" (1853), "
Hard Times Come Again No More" (
1854) and "
Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair" (1854), which was written for his wife, Jane McDowall.
Many of Foster's songs were in the
minstrel show tradition popular at the time. Although blackface performers were the only popular entertainment channel available to him, he sought to, in his own words, "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." He instructed white performers of his songs not to mock slaves but to get their audiences to feel compassion for them.
Although his songs largely dealt with life in the South, Foster himself had little firsthand experience there, only having visited
New Orleans in
1852 on his
honeymoon.
Foster tried to make a living as a professional songwriter, and may be considered a pioneer in this respect, since this field of endeavor did not yet exist in the modern sense. Consequently, due in part to the poor provisions for music copyright and composer royalties at the time, Foster saw very little of the profits which his works generated for
sheet music printers. Multiple publishers often printed their own competing editions of Foster's tunes, paying Foster nothing. For "Oh, Susanna", he received only $100.
Foster moved to
New York City in
1860. About a year later, his wife and daughter abandoned him to return to Pittsburgh. Beginning in 1862 his musical fortunes began to decline, and as they did, so did the quality of his new songs. He began working with George Cooper early in
1863 whose lyrics were often humorous and designed to appeal to musical theater audiences. The
Civil War was also ruinous to the market for musical performances.
Stephen Foster died on
January 13,
1864, at the early age of 37. He had been impoverished while living at the North American Hotel at 30
Bowery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan (possessing exactly 38
cents) when he died. In his pocket was a scrap of paper with only the enigmatic, "dear friends and gentle hearts", written on it. He is buried in the
Allegheny Cemetery in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of his best loved works, "
Beautiful Dreamer" was published shortly after his death.
His brother, Morrison Foster, is largely responsible for compiling his works and writing a short but pertinent biography of Stephen. His sister, Ann Eliza Foster Buchanan, married a brother of President
James Buchanan.
Foster is honored with a building on the
University of Pittsburgh campus called
Stephen Foster Memorial, which houses a museum.
'Stephen Foster was inducted into the
Songwriters' Hall of Fame in
1970d
*
Full reprint of 1908 book, The Melodies of Stephen C. Foster, contains sheet music and lyrics to over 150 Stephen Foster songs*
Stephen Foster's entry at the Songwriters' Hall of Fame*
Biographical sketch*
Stephen Collins Foster - American Dreams (includes a
midi collection)
*
Simple music and lyrics, chronologically *
Stephen Foster Memorial*
Online Song Sketchbook of Stephen Foster Handwritten draft texts for sixty-four songs
*
Extensive Foster site*
Recommended books on Foster*
Myths about Foster*
Stephen Foster, The Musical
