Two Stephen Foster Songs
Camptown Races was a Stephen Foster song first published in sheet music form by F.D. Benteen of Baltimore Maryland in 1852. Foster quite specifically tailored the song for use on the minstrel stage. He composed it as a piece for solo voice with group interjections and refrain ... his dialect verses have all the wild exaggeration and rough charm of folk tale as well as some of his most vivid imagery ... Together with Oh! Susanna, Camptown Races is one of the gems of the minstrel era.
In The Americana Song Reader, William Emmett Studwell writes that the song was introduced by the Christy Minstrels, and noting that "[Foster's] nonsense lyrics are much of the charm of this bouncy and enduring bit of Americana ... [The song] was a big hit with minstrel troupes throughout the country." In this case the traditionalist South Carolina String Band plays Camptown Races in the same authentic manner as minstrel show musicians in mid 1800s.
Oh! Susanna was written in 1848 by Foster. The song was very popular with confederate soldiers during the Civil War. This rare 1925 recording of Oh! Susanna is by A.E. Fields and contains the patently offensive lyric about "killing 500 n*ggers." Believe it or not that lyric was not considered to be offensive day in the good old days.
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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt
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