Foster, Stephen Collins (1826-1864), was one of America’s best-loved songwriters. The best of Foster’s songs have become part of the American cultural heritage. Some of them became so popular during Foster’s lifetime that they were adapted (with suitable words) for Sunday school use. Foster’s songs are frequently moving in their sincerity and simplicity. His most popular works include “Old Folks at Home,” which he wrote in 1851, (also known as “Swanee River,” see Suwannee River ); “My Old Kentucky Home, Good Night” (1853); and “Massa’s in de Cold, Cold Ground” (1852). He also wrote such rollicking songs as “Oh! Susanna” (1848), and “Camptown Races” (1850), and such romantic songs as “Beautiful Dreamer” (1864), and “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair” (1854). He wrote more than 200 songs, and wrote the words and the music for most of them.
Foster was born on July 4, 1826, near Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh). He had little musical training, but he had a great gift of melody. At the age of 6, he taught himself to play the clarinet, and he could pick up any tune by ear. He composed “The Tioga Waltz” (1841) for piano at 14. Three years later, his first song, “Open Thy Lattice, Love,” was published.
Foster wrote his first minstrel melodies, called “Ethiopian songs,” in the 1840’s. These were “Lou’siana Belle” (1847) and “Old Uncle Ned” (1848). Blackface minstrel shows, in which white entertainers blackened their faces, were becoming popular in the United States (see Minstrel show ). Foster decided to write songs for the minstrels and to improve the quality of their music.
He went to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1846 to work as a bookkeeper for his brother. That year he wrote “Oh! Susanna.” Soon it became the favorite song of the “Forty-Niners” in the California gold rush of 1849. He married Jane McDowell in 1850, and settled in Pittsburgh to work as a composer. He arranged with the minstrel leader E. P. Christy to have his new songs performed on the minstrel stage. Foster was a poor businessman, and he sold many of his most famous songs for very little money. He lived in New York City from 1860 until his death on Jan. 13, 1864, struggling against illness, poverty, and alcoholism.
