Doo-dah!: Stephen Foster And The Rise Of American Popular Culture

About this book

"A colorful panoramic view of 19-century American society--with P. T. Barnum Frederick Douglass Harriet Beecher Stowe and Fosters relative President James Buchanan all glimpsed in the background. The authors enviably broad knowledge of pop music . . . allows him to draw provocative and intelligent parallels with figures from American culture past and present."--Washington Times Stephen Foster (1826-1864) was Americas first great songwriter and the first to earn his living solely through his music. He composed some 200 songs including such classics as "Oh! Susanna " "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair " "Old Folks at Home (Way down upon the Swanee River) " and "Camptown Races (Doo-dah! Doo-dah!)." He virtually invented popular music as we recognize it to this day yet he died at age thirty-seven a forgotten and nearly penniless alcoholic on the Bowery. The author reveals Fosters contradictory life while disclosing how the dynamics of nineteenth-century industrialization westward expansion the Gold Rush slavery and the Civil War infused his music and how that music influenced popular culture.