Stephen Foster

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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 – 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" ("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.

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