Stephen Foster & Co.: Lyrics of the First Great American Songwriters: (American Poets Project #30)

Stephen Foster is the trunk of the tree of American song. His blackface minstrel songs, including “Oh! Susanna,” “Old Folks at Home” (“Way down upon the Swanee River…”), and “My Old Kentucky Home,” and his parlor ballads, such as “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair,” and “Beautiful Dreamer,” have inspired composers, songwriters, and performers from Charles Ives and George Gershwin to Ray Charles and James Taylor. Foster devoted as much care and craft to his lyrics as he did to his timeless me...