Stephen Foster

Stephen Collins Foster, known as "the father of American music", was an American composer known primarily for his parlour and folk music during the Romantic period. Foster wrote more than 200 songs, including "Oh! Susanna", "Hard Times Come Again No More", "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 today.

Early life

There are many biographies of Foster, but details differ widely. Among other issues, he wrote very little biographical information himself, and his brother Morrison Foster may have destroyed much information that he judged to reflect negatively upon the family.
Foster was born on July 4, 1826, in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania. His parents, William Barclay Foster and Eliza Clayland Tomlinson Foster, were of Ulster Scots and English descent. Foster had three older sisters and six older brothers. He attended private academies in Allegheny, Athens, and Towanda, Pennsylvania, and received an education in English grammar, diction, the classics, penmanship, Latin, Greek, and mathematics.
Foster taught himself to play the clarinet, guitar, flute, and piano. In 1839, his brother William was serving his apprenticeship as an engineer at Towanda and thought that Stephen would benefit from being under the supervision of Henry Kleber, a German-born music dealer in Pittsburgh. Under Kleber, Stephen was exposed to music composition. Together, the pair studied the works of Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Mendelssohn and Schubert.
The site of the Camptown Races – which would provide both the title and setting for events of one of Foster's best-known songs – was located from Athens and from Towanda. Foster's education included a brief period at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, now part of Washington & Jefferson College. His tuition was paid, but Foster had little spending money. He left Canonsburg to visit Pittsburgh with another student and did not return.

Career

Foster married Jane Denny McDowell on July 22, 1850, and they visited New York and Baltimore on their honeymoon. He then returned to Pennsylvania and wrote most of his best-known songs: "Camptown Races", "Nelly Bly", "Ring de Banjo" , "Old Folks at Home", "My Old Kentucky Home", "Old Dog Tray", and "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair", written for his wife Jane.
Many of Foster's songs were used in the blackface minstrel shows popular at the time. He sought 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". However, Foster's output of minstrel songs declined after the early 1850s, as he turned primarily to parlor music. Many of his songs had Southern themes, yet Foster never lived in the South and visited it only once, during his 1852 honeymoon. Available archival evidence does not suggest that Foster was an abolitionist.
Foster's last four years were spent in New York City. There is little information on this period of his life, although family correspondence has been preserved.

Illness and death

Foster became sick with a fever in January 1864. Weakened, it is possible that he fell in his hotel in the Bowery and cut his neck; Foster may also have sought to take his own life. His writing partner George Cooper found Foster still alive but lying in a pool of blood. Foster died in Bellevue Hospital three days later at age 37. His leather wallet contained a scrap of paper that simply said, "Dear friends and gentle hearts", along with 37 cents in Civil War scrip and three pennies.
Other biographers describe different accounts of his death. Historian JoAnne O'Connell speculates in her biography, The Life and Songs of Stephen Foster, that Foster may have killed himself. As O'Connell and musicologist Ken Emerson have noted, several of the songs Foster wrote during the last years of his life foreshadow his death, such as "The Little Ballad Girl" and "Kiss Me Dear Mother Ere I Die." Emerson says in his 2010 Stephen Foster and Co. that Foster's injuries may have been "accidental or self-inflicted".
The note inside Foster's wallet is said to have inspired Bob Hilliard's lyric for "Dear Hearts and Gentle People". Foster was buried in the Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh. After his death, Morrison Foster became his "literary executor". As such, he answered requests for copies of manuscripts, autographs, and biographical information. After his death, "Beautiful Dreamer", one of the best-loved of his works, was posthumously published in 1864.

Music

Foster grew up in Lawrenceville, now a neighborhood of Pittsburgh, where many European immigrants had settled and were accustomed to hearing the music of the Italian, Scots-Irish, and German residents. He composed his first song at age 14 and entitled it the "Tioga Waltz". The first song Foster had published was "Open thy Lattice Love". He wrote songs in support of drinking, such as "My Wife Is a Most Knowing Woman", "Mr. and Mrs. Brown", and "When the Bowl Goes Round", while also composing temperance songs such as "Comrades Fill No Glass for Me" or "The Wife".
Foster also authored many church hymns, although the inclusion of his hymns in hymnals ended by 1910. Some of the hymns are "Seek and ye shall find", "All around is bright and fair, While we work for Jesus", and "Blame not those who weep and sigh". Several rare Civil War-era hymns by Foster were performed by The Old Stoughton Musical Society Chorus, including "The Pure, The Bright, The Beautiful", "Over The River", "Give Us This Day", and "What Shall The Harvest Be?". He also arranged many works by Mozart, Beethoven, Donizetti, Lanner, Weber and Schubert for flute and guitar.
Foster usually sent his handwritten scores directly to his publishers. The publishers kept the sheet music manuscripts and did not give them to libraries nor return them to his heirs. Some of his original, hand-written scores were bought and put into private collections and the Library of Congress.

Popular songs

"My Old Kentucky Home" is the official state song of Kentucky, adopted by the General Assembly on March 19, 1928.
Foster's songs, lyrics, and melodies have often been altered by publishers and performers.
In 1957, Ray Charles released a version of "Old Folks at Home" that was titled "Swanee River Rock ", which became his first pop hit that November.
In the 2000s, "Old Folks at Home", designated the official state song of Florida in 1935, came under attack for what some regarded as offensive terms in the song's lyrics. Changes were made to them with the approval of the Stephen Foster Memorial. The modified song was kept as the official state song, while "Florida " was added as the state anthem.
A 1974 published collection, Stephen Foster Song Book; Original Sheet Music of 40 Songs, of Stephen Foster's popular songs was edited by musicologist Richard Jackson.

Legacy

Musical influence

Songs

Professor of folklore and musician John Minton wrote a song titled "Stephen C. Foster's Blues".
Walt Kelly recorded an a cappella rendition of Foster's "Old Dog Tray" on the 1956 album Songs of the Pogo. Kelly regularly referenced "Old Dog Tray" as the theme song for his character Beauregard Hound Dog, from his comic strip Pogo.
The Firesign Theatre makes many references to Foster's compositions in their CD Boom Dot Bust.
Larry Kirwan of Black 47 mixes the music of Foster with his own in the musical Hard Times, which earned a New York Times accolade in its original run: "a knockout entertainment". Kirwan gives a contemporary interpretation of Foster's troubled later years and sets it in the tumultuous time of the New York draft riots and the Irish–Negro relations of the period. A revival ran at the Cell Theater in New York in early 2014, and a revised version of the musical called Paradise Square opened at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2018.
Gordon Lightfoot wrote a song in 1970 titled "Your Love's Return."
Randy Newman's 1970 album 12 Songs contained Newman's song "Old Kentucky Home", which is based on Foster's "My Old Kentucky Home, Good-Night!" Newman told Billboard magazine, "It's a good song because Stephen Foster wrote the hook". Under various titles, Newman's "Old Kentucky Home" was covered by the Beau Brummels, the Alan Price Set and Johnny Cash.
Spike Jones recorded a comedy send-up "I Dream of Brownie with the Light Blue Jeans."
Humorist Stan Freberg imagined a 1950s style version of Foster's music in "Rock Around Stephen Foster" and, with Harry Shearer, had a sketch about Foster having writer's block in a bit from his "United States of America" project.
Songwriter Tom Shaner mentions Stephen Foster meeting up with Eminem's alter ego "Slim Shady" on the Bowery in Shaner's song "Rock & Roll is A Natural Thing".
The music of Stephen Foster was an early influence on the Australian composer Percy Grainger, who stated that hearing "Camptown Races" sung by his mother was one of his earliest musical recollections. He went on to write a piece entitled "Tribute to Foster", a composition for mixed choir, orchestra, and pitched wine glasses based on the melody of "Camptown Races".
Art Garfunkel was cast as Stephen Foster and sang his songs in an elementary school play in Queens, New York.
Foster's name is included in the rapid fire litany of musicians and songs that make up the lyrics of the 1974 pop novelty song "Life Is a Rock " by Reunion.
Neil Sedaka wrote and recorded a song about Foster and released it on his 1975 album, The Hungry Years.
Alternative country duo The Handsome Family's song "Wildebeest", from their 2013 album Wilderness, is about Foster's death.
Squirrel Nut Zippers wrote and recorded a song in 1998 titled "The Ghost of Stephen Foster".
Stace England released in April 2024, as part of the group Foster's Satchel, a full-length album entitled Over the River: Stephen Foster Reimagined.
John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival has said Foster's music inspired his own music, especially "Proud Mary".