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Greenwood2
STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER
The man who died penniless (well, actually he had almost forty cents) in New York in his 38th year was probably America’s first great songwriter.
A great many myths surround the composer and in many cases are better known than fact—that Foster was an idle, untrained musician, was an incurable spendthrift devoid of business sense, was an alcoholic who committed suicide or in a drunken stupor fell from a fire escape to his death, was wealthy and earned a great deal of money, was a Southerner, was gay, was a plagiarist or composed tunes, such as Swanee or My Old Kentucky Home, in a moment of brilliance while visiting those locales on vacation.
Born east of Pittsburgh on July 4, 1826 (the same day Founding Fathers John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died), Foster was the ninth of ten children of William B. and Eliza T. Foster. The tenth child died in infancy so Stephen became the “baby” of the family. Another son was born to William before he married Eliza and was raised as the oldest child of the clan.
A popular myth is that Foster was a musical genius but wholly untrained and lacking any business sense. Foster studied at several private schools and academes and with tutors in Pennsylvania. He excelled most in music, but for the time, he was quite well-educated. Early songs like Oh, Susanna and Open Thy Lattice, Love attest to Foster’s musical ability. At the age of 20, Foster was employed as a bookkeeper in Cincinnati at his brother’s steamship company, hardly a job for know-nothings.
When he was 24, with a dozen songs published, Foster returned to Pittsburgh to marry Jane Denny McDowell and pursue writing songs full-time. As to Foster’s being a shiftless knock-about, his surviving books show how diligently he studied and selected each word and punctuation mark.
One of Foster’s most widely-known tunes can be heard on the first Saturday in May before the start of The Kentucky Derby, the first of racing’s Triple Crown, when My Old Kentucky Home is played. It is also performed on “Senior Day” at the University of Kentucky’s men’s basketball season’s final home game. Versions of Oh, Susannah were a favorite of the ‘49ers on their way to California gold rush but the song was so widely plagiarized by publishers that Foster only realized about a hundred dollars.
There was no ASCAP, radio, television or film then so almost all of his income derived from sheet music sales. He wrote music for Christy’s minstrel shows which were the most popular form of entertainment of the time and by far the biggest audience. Others were known to try to pass off Foster’s work as their own. My Old Kentucky Home probably refers to the slave quarters at Federal Hill, the estate of Judge John Rowan, in Bardstown, Kentucky, home of My Old Kentucky Home State Park. The Suwanee River in Florida was never visited by Foster but seen on a map and a shortened version became Swanee.
Foster himself was not an abolitionist but one of his best friends, Charles Shiras, started an anti-slavery newspaper inspired by William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator. Minstrel shows perpetuated and demeaned black laborers but Foster opted to try and change minstrel shows from within instead of carping from outside.
The composer of Camptown Races, Beautiful Dreamer, Ring, Ring the Banjo, Old Folks at Home and Hard Times Come Again No More earned less than $20,000 professionally; nearly ¼ of that was collected by his heirs. The Stephen Foster Story/Stephen Foster-The Musical is a Kentucky mainstay and one of the nation’s longest-running musical outdoor dramas.
Stephen Foster passed away at New York’s Bellevue hospital, suffering from a fever, ague and a deep cut caused by a hotel room basin he broke attempting to wash.
Stephen Foster
Oldfield4
Southern Speak
Not completely forthcoming,
“Half the truth is often a whole lie.”
A person’s actions count most,
“Handsome is as handsome does.”
“He who hesitates is lost.”
but
“Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.”
“Everything comes to those who wait.” or “Rome wasn't built in a day.”
but
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” and “Faint heart never won a fair maid.”
“More haste, less speed.” or “Haste makes waste.”
but
“Strike while the iron is hot.” and “Make hay while the sun shines.”
“Cowards die many times, but a brave man only dies once.”
but
“Better a live coward than a dead hero.”
“You can't teach an old dog new tricks.”
but
“You're never too old to learn.”
“Beauty is only skin deep.” or “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
but
“Ugly cuts clean to the bone.”
“Too many cooks spoils the broth.”
but
“Many hands make light work.”
“I never met a man I didn’t like.”
but
“Friend to all is a friend to none.”
“Lie down with dogs and you get up with fleas.”
but
“If you wanna get big fleas, you gotta run with the big dogs.”
“If a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing well.”
but
“Practice makes perfect.”
“It’s my way or the highway.”
but
“There are two sides to every coin.”
“The end justifies the means.”
but
“Two wrongs don't make a right.”
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All original artwork in The Blue Mud Chronicles is by Jeffrey Unthank. See more of his work at:
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