Stephen Foster, American Songwriter

Before radio and television, movies and recordings, entertainment was often a family or community matter.

Someone in the family could play a musical instrument, or a neighborhood musician would play for small gatherings.

In addition, there would be traveling groups of musicians, actors, and clowns who would go from town to town.

In 19th century United States, one of the most popular forms of entertainment was the minstrel show.

Black slavery was still permitted in the southern states until 1865.

Even after that date, the lives of many blacks working on large farms or plantations did not change much.

They did hard physical labor in the fields, had little control over their lives,

and very little time to relax with their friends.

Foster, who was born in 1826, made this situation the background for many of his songs.

White musicians would try to imagine the feelings of black men and women working on the plantations.

They would write songs in the dialect or speech patterns that they thought black slaves used.

In these songs, the black people would be talking about their hardships,

falling in love, playing music and dancing, and finally growing old and dying.

White performers would blacken their faces and sing these songs to white audiences.

They would play musical instruments like the banjo, a small four-string guitar,

which black people played often.

As a small boy, Stephen Foster had sometimes been taken to a black church

by his family's black servant, Olivia Pies.

Here, he first heard the melodies that inspired his own songs.

Only a couple of Foster's songs are based directly on Negro spirituals,

but many of his songs have the natural simplicity and emotional power of folk songs.

The youngest member of a large family, Foster showed his musical talent at an early age.

He played the flute, violin, and piano.

Growing up in an energetic business family, Stephen was expected to become a businessman,

And for a while, he worked as a bookkeeper.

All his spare time, however, was spent writing songs.

Foster attended minstrel shows and tried to get the performers to sing his songs.

Sometimes the performers would steal his songs and publish them under their own names.

Copyright laws were weak and rarely enforced,

so some music publishers would just go ahead and publish a song without paying the songwriter.

Since Foster hoped to make a living as a songwriter, this was a problem.

Foster's first hit song was Oh Susanna, published in 1848.

It became popular with the thousands of men from all over the United States

who were heading west to the California gold rush of 1849.

Unfortunately, as an unknown songwriter, Foster received no money from his early songs.

He seems to have given them outright to the music publishers just to establish his reputation.

Foster's name, however, was soon widely known,

and in 1849 he was able to afford to give up bookkeeping

and Mary, the daughter of a Pittsburgh physician.

During the next five years, he earned a moderately good income from songwriting.

In 1851, a daughter, Marion, was born.

Foster wrote many of his best-known songs at this time,

Old Folks at Home in 1851, My Old Kentucky Home in 1853,

and Jeannie with a Light Brown Hair in 1854.

Difficulties in Foster's marriage began fairly soon.

These may have been partly due to his strange work habits.

He spent days locked in his room working on his songs.

Then he would rush out with his materials to the local music store,

presumably to test out the songs on his friends.

He also became more and more addicted to alcohol.

Eventually, his wife and daughter left him.

Foster died alone in a rooming house in 1864.

Immigrants to the United States brought their traditional folk songs with them.

However, there are very few typically American songs.

Foster provided many songs that expressed the life of 19th century USA.

His songs were easy to sing and were popular with nearly everyone.

In a sense, Foster helped to create roots for American popular music.