The essence of Americana, the songs of Stephen Foster are as fundamental and timeless a part of the American identity as The Gettysburg Address and Born on the 4th of July in 1826, more than three decades before the Civil War, he was a professional songwriter before there was any music business in America. 7 They also wrote a couple of songs tailored specifically for the Civil War, including “Willie Has Gone to War.” None of the new songs could touch the ongoing popularity of his early songs, however, which remained beloved in both the North and the South throughout the war.He also tried his hand at writing sacred songs intended for children, contributing the beautiful “Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread” and other songs to a Sunday school songbook.Though he wrote more than 100 songs during his final years, most of them remained unpublished and are lost forever. If ideas move forward on the shoulders of giants, and that is certainly true in the world of American pop music, then Email. Foster’s father was a politician and businessman whose hapless real estate speculations led the family to the brink of financial ruin. In 1854 he completed a massive project called The Social Orchestra, an arrangement for flute, violin, piano and other instruments of some 73 different pieces combined, including his own music as well as music written by Mozart, Schubert and others. Instead of handing out taped demos as would a modern songwriter, he’d pass out sheet music of his songs to various minstrel shows as they passed through town. Susanna,” “Old Kentucky Home,” “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair” and “Old Folks at Home,” songs which have resonated through the generations. In this way, he is forever remembered as being both America’s first professional songwriter, and the first to be cheated by unscrupulous businessmen.This taught him an important lesson, however—that there was a lot of money that could be made in songwriting if he was able to protect his songs. Beautiful Dreamer, a compilation album of contemporary artists playing Stephen Foster songs; Beautiful Dreamers, a 2010 album by guitarist Bill Frisell featuring a version of the Stephen Foster … Though his success up to that point consisted of writing minstrel songs in black dialect, he aspired to write a more serious, universal kind of song.
Find album reviews, stream songs, credits and award information for Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster - Various Artists on AllMusic - 2004 - If ideas move forward on the shoulders of giants,… It was published posthumously in March 1864, by Wm.
It’s been estimated that during his lifetime he earned just over fifteen thousand dollars in royalties on sheet music from his entire catalog of songs, and no income at all from performance royalties. But rather than earn Foster much income, the song was essentially bootlegged by many different music publishers, who sold the sheet music to the public and cashed in on its popularity without compensating the songwriter at all.
He figured that the best way to expose his songs to the largest possible audience was to get them into the minstrel shows circulating through the country. “Nelly Is A Lady,” written in 1849, was the first of his songs to break away from the common caricatures of black culture which he had help to promulgate. He hoped to make a living from songwriting, but it was impossible. He embarked on the first and only songwriting collaboration of his career in 1862 with the poet George Cooper, who wrote comic lyrics Foster felt were commercial enough to appeal to musical theater fans.