Popular Music Pioneer Stephen Foster's Complicated Legacy

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: JUNE 17, 1997
Time: 12:00
Tran: 061701np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Ovum Recordings
Sect: News; Domestic
Time: 12:06

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

In the spring, after attending a dance music conference in Miami, New York Times music critic Neil Strauss wrote: the conference proved that few underground styles are more creative, diverse, and deserving of wider recognition.

Electronic dance music, or "techno," has been big in Europe for several years, but is now just catching on in the states. Because the music here has remained mostly in clubs, some of its heroes are not yet household names.

For example, you may not be familiar with my guests Josh Wink and King Britt, but they're very popular DJs and producers in the international dance music world. They're both from Philadelphia, and together they have a new record label imprint affiliated with Columbia Records called Ovum.

In 1995, Josh Wink had four singles that hit Britain's Top 40 charts, and one record that was number one on the Billboard dance chart. King Britt toured with the hip-hop group "Diggable Planets" and has re-mixed and produced tracks for Donna Lewis (ph) and Tori Amos. He has a new album under the name "Silk 30."

First, we're going to hear a track from Josh's new Ovum recording Are You There?

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, SONG "ARE YOU THERE?" BY JOSH WINK)

JOSH WINK, SINGER, SINGING: Are you there?
Are you there?
Are you there?
Are you there?

(CHORUS CONTINUES)

GROSS: Josh Wink told me that people are often confused by what he does, which is a lot more than spinning turntables. I asked him what instruments and equipment he used on the new CD.

WINK: We have keyboards. We have drum machines. We have samplers. We have computers. We have turntables, but we don't really use the turntables for making music. What we use the turntables for is to play the music that we made a couple months down the road.

GROSS: Whose words did you sample, saying Are you there?

WINK: That's a friend of mine by the name of Rob Sherwood (ph), and it was actually on my answering machine. And sometimes in my studio, I have all the ringers off and I just had the volume up a little bit on my answering machine, to not be bothered with the constant ringing of the phone, which happens to both King and I a lot.

So most people know when they call that I'm screening my phone calls, so they say: you know, Josh, it's so and so. Are you there?

GROSS: King Britt, I want to get to your new CD, which is recorded under the name "Silk 130" and CD's called "Get Into It." And this has several mixes...

KING BRITT, RECORDING ARTIST: Yes.

GROSS: ... which is your favorite? We'll play that one.

BRITT: My favorite is the original mix -- the first basement recording. So that's the one I like.

GROSS: Let's hear it.

BRITT: OK.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, SONG "GET INTO IT" BY KING BRITT)

BRITT SINGING: Get get get into it
Get get get into it
Midnight (Unintelligible)
Walkin' into the night
Walkin' into light at my own pace
Thinkin' of a love so strong
Takin' chances -- takin' chances hey now, before it's gone
Get get get
You gotta get -- get to this
You got to get involved -- get into
You gotta get -- get to grips
You got to get involved -- get into it
Red light's -- call home
It's a lonely ride
'Cause lovin's gone

GROSS: I think that listening to that, I was trying to place the sample. Is that from "Shaft?"

BRITT: No, unfortunately it's not, but it has that feel.

GROSS: Yes, it's like very Shaft-era.

BRITT: Yeah.

GROSS: What is it?

BRITT: Yeah, exactly. Well, that's a Bar-Kay (ph) sample.

GROSS: Oh.

BRITT: It's called "Fighting Fire with Fire." You know, it's interesting -- with looping and sampling, you know, a lot of people are like, oh, you've just taking someone else's music and making it your own. But as you can see with this song, there's a lot more emotion. I look at sampling as looping pieces of emotion, and that's why the whole Silk 130 album, I'd say that it's an emotion picture.

Not that everything is sampled. This song is really old. It's about three years old, actually. First came to mind, like, I was just in a basement going through records, and it just hit me -- like, certain parts of songs hit DJs in a certain way. You know, like, wow -- this is a strong part.

And, you know, I heard that and I looped it, put it into my sampler, which is always next to the turntable just in case, and I looped it and it just -- it's something where we take samples or loops, we're always trying to take something that you can hear over and over, and it stirs up some sort of visual image in your head.

So, you know, you take the loop; you put it in your sampler, and then I wanted to add my own element -- my own emotion -- to the loop. So I pick out a string sound and that's what you hear in the beginning, and that's what really gives it that Shaft/Isaac Hayes type of orchestration.

GROSS: Right.

BRITT: So you put strings in and it adds -- it kind of tones down the strength of the loop. And then, you know, being that we're DJs, for the dance floor you need that -- those rhythms, those beats enhanced. So, you know, I added a break beat underneath, a snare and kick and high-hat. And then on top of that, there's another loop, drum loop, just to give it bottom; to give it depth.

GROSS: I'd like to have a sense of what it's like for you as DJs in a club. What are you surrounded with? What can you do? What's a typical mix like for you when you're doing it live in a club?

BRITT: Well, first I try -- I look at the crowd and kind of get a feel for what has been played previously. I try to use a lot of sound effects, as you heard in the Silk 130 -- like rain sounds and wind -- just to create some sort of world within the club. And lights have a lot to do with it -- I like really minimal lights -- lighting to go along with the music.

And the music that I spin when I spin house music is very deep and aquatic and it really makes you kind of think and close your eyes, and wow, this is beautiful -- and very melodic. And you kind of go on a trip. You know, you start slow. You build it up. You climax. You come back down. You climax again.

So it's really interesting to see what two records, putting those two records together and kind of making a new sound, kind of, you know -- it's wild to see what happens to the crowd.

GROSS: Josh, I think your music is much more techno -- much more kind of electronic-oriented. And tell me why you head in that direction?

WINK: Well, I head in every kind of direction. A unique thing about me is that I'm able to kind of skate on the thin line in between different kinds of music, and that's a unique aspect on myself that people say towards myself, and I can say about myself -- same with King. I mean, King's album is soul; it's funk; it's acid jazz-based. But he still produces house music and dance music, even techno music.

And a lot of people have the expectations that we only make one sound or one style of music. I just call what I do electronic music because it's basically -- everything that I kind of do is electronic-based. Even if I use a saxophone player, you know, I record electronically.

So I just go to where my heart goes. You know, if I'm feeling like making a, you know, a house record I'll make a house record. Or if I want to do an ambient track with no beats -- you know, just get into real avant garde experimentation -- then I'll do that.

GROSS: My guests are dance music DJs and producers Josh Wink and King Britt. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

Back with dance music DJs and producers Josh Wink and King Britt.

King, when you're in a club and you're mixing different records and you're looking for a certain groove on one record, how do you visually find that? I mean, how do you even know where to put the needle down?

BRITT: Well, I mean in dance music and house music, first you gotta know your records.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

BRITT: You know, when you're at home, you just, what, pile of records. You really should go through your records and learn where these grooves are, where the breaks are, and where, like, just the main rhythm is.

So you kind of, if you go in there knowing your records, you know where to put the needle. I mean, visually you can see different breaks or you can -- you just know where it is. I just can't really explain it, but...

WINK: You feel it.

BRITT: Yeah.

WINK: Yeah, that's a thing that King's about to get into is that -- it's basically all mathematics. Things happen in measures of usually four or two.

BRITT: Yeah.

WINK: So you basically can feel when a change is about to come down, right?

BRITT: Yeah, you just -- yeah. You do feel it. But also you feel -- emotionally, you feel it too, when you have two records. Some people hold records, you know, hold two records together in synch to create a new record, which Josh is really known for. Kind of like it's orchestrating -- it's creating a whole new song with two records.

Or just mixing -- taking people's emotion and changing it -- you know, going from something really dark, and then lifting them up into, you know, with a piano or with a high-tone record. And it uplifts your spirits.

WINK: It's really an art. A lot of people can just play records, but when you start making music out of the records, that's when it gets to that next level. And then you'll see the DJs just really manipulate a crowd, and it's unbelievable how they do that -- like a rock show.

GROSS: Well, tell me about how like when you're watching a crowd, what you're looking for, to see how they're responding, and then working off of that -- yeah, yeah, yeah.

BRITT: It was amazing. We were just in Toronto. Now, I've seen Josh, right, spin -- what were you 17? 18? Working at "The Banana" -- "Black Banana" here in Philadelphia.

WINK: Eighteen.

BRITT: So there we were in Toronto, and it's about -- it's like 2,000 people. So Josh gets on and people are going nuts. They're just -- it's like a concert. People are like -- they're just waiting to hear what's going to happen.

So, you know, Josh is -- starts real, you know, nice vocally and house-oriented music. Then he just goes deeper, and you see the crowd react, you know. First, they're all like this. And then all of a sudden, I guess an hour into it, they're really -- oh, they have their eyes closed and they're just really into the groove.

Josh is like the master of the groove, you know. He's got the groove going and he just goes from one to the other, building it up with sounds -- really into sounds, real minimalistic tracks, but when you put them together, it's creating something else.

So, you know, Josh is known for his, you know, harder, break-beaty (ph), like really strong emotional electronic music. So he's building it up to that point.

But he has these tools -- see, he had three turntables there -- but he has these tools. Like, there are certain records with just a drum-roll, and there are certain records with, like, helicopter sounds and just records, you know, with looped tools that we need. It adds certain elements.

So he's got this really incredible groove going, but he's got this drum-roll record and he's playing a drum-roll record and bringing up the volume, you know, people -- you hear the drum-roll get louder and louder. People are going nuts, and the lights go along with the drum-roll. He drops the track out, and all you hear is the drum-roll.

And then it's kind of building up, building up, you know, kind of like, well, sex. And it's building up and then all of a sudden, boom, it comes back and the lights and the kids are like screaming. And it's amazing.

WINK: It's fun.

BRITT: It's amazing to see.

WINK: It's crescendos.

BRITT: Amazing to see

WINK: (Unintelligible)

BRITT: I was like this. I was looking (Unintelligible).

GROSS: How did you first start DJ-ing? Did you do it alone in your room before you actually got to a club?

BRITT: I did.

WINK: Well, it's different for us. But, I actually got into DJ-ing -- DJ-ing's a very in-fashion thing to do right now. As I said, the circle has turned, and now it's a cool and hip thing to do. But when I got into DJ-ing, it was in 1983 -- a friend of mine was a radio DJ on a AM station in Kresgyville (ph), Pennsylvania.

And my enthusiasm was turned on getting involved in radio. And then from radio, my friend Chuck, he actually started getting into mobile DJ-ing and I became his apprentice when I was 13 years old and setting up a van, you know, to putting the equipment together and learning the business.

And then three years later, I bought his equipment and taught myself how to DJ, and it was the desire to want to do this. And then I started doing house parties and school parties, and then it just -- you know, it developed, and the desire got stronger and the passion became even greater.

And I guess, you know, I was a barback in a nightclub here in Philadelphia and that was my in. You know, at the late-'80s, you know all the DJs in Philadelphia were the DJs that have been around for awhile, and everything was getting a little stagnant. And so it was hard for me to get in, especially as an 18-year-old, and these DJs are at least eight to 10 years old than me, and I'm fresh blood and I, you know, may seem to be, you know, competition for them.

But our friend Blake Tarte (ph), who's a DJ, you know, in Philadelphia. He was a bicycle courier, and we used to throw parties in Philadelphia for bike couriers out in the West Village -- in like, in warehouse spaces as private parties, you know, in the late '80s.

And then we started getting nightclub gigs and spinning in the nightclubs, and then King and I hooked up in '89 through Blake. And King was DJ-ing, then, at times for parties, but with tapes. He didn't know how to DJ with records.

GROSS: Really?

BRITT: Tapes and CDs.

GROSS: Well. Well.

BRITT: Well, I've always -- I mean, growing up -- I grew up in southwest Phillie, so block parties were massive -- were the big thing. That was a rave to me. You know, you have a thousand people on your street, and you have a big stage, and a DJ, you know -- Cash Money, Jazzy Jeff, DJ-Miz (ph) -- all these amazing hip-hop DJs cutting and scratching and manipulating two records and bringing a groove back in.

It was mindblowing.

WINK: Yeah.

BRITT: And they -- you know, I used to play records for friends on my porch. That was the extent of my music. And then -- so, I always was amazed at that, but you know, I couldn't afford turntables or that sort of thing. Then when I moved out and, you know, I've always bought records. You gotta keep buying your records. It's all about your education and your knowledge of different types of music.

And then, you know, I started working at Tower and I knew Blake for years as well, and, you know, Blake told Josh that I was working at Tower, and that's how I first met Josh. Then we all moved in together, and yes, the desire to spin -- I just...

WINK: It was a hunger.

BRITT: ... it was all to learn. I had to learn to spin, and then Silk said he had to push Josh about a job spinning at Silk, but he couldn't do it, and he said, you know, my friend, my roommate and friend King is learning to spin and this sort of thing, and I think he can, you know, he can handle it.

And I remember my first night at Silk, I was going...

WINK: So nervous, man.

BRITT: I brought like four crates of records, like my whole collection. It was fantastic though. And then, over the years, we've just developed a certain sound over at Silk City.

GROSS: Do the people still scratch?

BRITT: Yeah.

GROSS: I mean, scratching was -- yeah?

WINK: In certain settings.

BRITT: I mean, it's beyond -- it's beyond the way it used to be, scratching, when you -- of course, you have the DMC contests and these different competitions, and you have these teams -- like I was saying, like the "Invisible Scratch Pickles" -- they're a team out of San Francisco...

WINK: San Francisco.

BRITT: Eight turntables.

WINK: They're playing, like, instruments.

BRITT: Yeah, they're instruments.

WINK: Phenomenal. It's something that you can't really visually comprehend by hearing us talk about it -- but until you see it on video...

GROSS: Right.

WINK: ... or in person, it's like holy cow.

BRITT: And then, well, I used to be in Diggable Planets, and that was an amazing setting because I, as a DJ, was a musician. You know, we had bass, drums, horns, keys, and then the three rappers and then a DJ. So my job -- nothing was on DAT. Nothing was pre-recorded, well, except the records, but I had to manipulate the records in accordance with the structure of the song.

So all I had was the drumbeats and the samples, and I had to make sure the timing of the turntables was perfect with the drummer, and vice versa. If it skipped, you know, I had to get out of it, but that's the whole...

GROSS: Right.

BRITT: ... aspect of spinning live with a band.

GROSS: There are so many CDs now and a lot of record stores carry CDs and they don't carry records any more. It's getting more challenging to find vinyl.

WINK: Well.

GROSS: Do you go to a lot of used record stores, or?

WINK: King does, yeah.

BRITT: Well, yeah, I mean it depends on what you're in to. Like, if you're in to the new vinyl and what you need for now, like all this stuff coming out of Europe and all. I mean, there are tons of stores that just sell vinyl; that specialize -- they're specialty stores for the DJ. And being that DJ culture is coming back into the forefront, you know, you see a lot more stores like Tower, H&V selling vinyl again.

And yes, we do go to old record stores, especially for production. You know, we want to take a lot of maybe beats and rhythms from older records and apply it to our new sound.

WINK: It's a balance. I mean, the way the technology's getting now, that DJ-ing and -- it's becoming I guess a kind of a fad. You know, parents aren't really giving their kids or kids aren't buying, you know, bass guitars or guitars or drum sets.

They're getting turntables. They're getting samplers. They're able to do what we've done a little bit more accessibly more because it's more affordable; it's fun; it's easy. You could do it in your bedroom. You can get a home bedroom studio for around $1,500.

You know, and most parents if they get, you know, their children these things, in terms of buying a bass guitar and a cabinet amp and lessons maybe? You know, we're talking the same amount of money. But you can get a sampler, a keyboard, a drum machine all together.

BRITT: It's like punk rock.

WINK: Well, it's totally -- it's accessible.

GROSS: I want to thank you both a lot for talking with us. It's been fun and I really appreciate it.

BRITT: Thank you.

WINK: Thank you.

BRITT: Thank you for having us.

GROSS: Josh Wink and King Britt are based in Philadelphia. They each have a new CD on their new record label Ovum.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest: King Britt; Josh Wink
High: Philadelphia-based DJs and recording artists King Britt and Josh Wink joined their creative efforts together to form Ovum Recordings, an independent record label. Britt and Wink are each celebrated techno performers in the international dance music community and each has his own unique music style. Ovum recently agreed to a worldwide label pact with Ruffhouse/Columbia Records.
Spec: Music Industry; Ovum Recordings
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright (c) 1997 National Public Radio, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. under license from National Public Radio, Inc. Formatting copyright (c) 1997 Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission. For further information please contact NPR's Business Affairs at (202) 414-2954
End-Story: Ovum Recordings
Show: FRESH AIR
Date: JUNE 17, 1997
Time: 12:00
Tran: 061702np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Stephen Foster Bio
Sect: News; Domestic
Time: 12:30

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Stephen Foster was perhaps the first full-time, professional songwriter. He made a living from sheet music sales. This was back in the infancy of pop music, in the 19th century, before the days of records and radio.

Foster's role as one of the fathers of pop music is one reason why rock critic Ken Emerson has written a new biography of Stephen Foster. Many of Foster's songs are still in the air, like "Oh! Susanna," "Jeanie With The Light Brown Hair," "My Old Kentucky Home," "Camptown Races," and "Beautiful Dreamer."

As we'll hear, Emerson was also fascinated by the complicated racial meaning of Foster's songs. Some of his songs are written in black dialect for black-face minstrels, and are now considered embarrassments like "Massah's in the Cold Ground" and "Old Black Joe."

Ken Emerson wants us to hear a recording of Foster's song "Old Folks at Home" performed by Louis Armstrong and the Mills Brothers. Here's why.

KEN EMERSON, BIOGRAPHER: It's particularly interesting because obviously Louie Armstrong did not want to sing this song, and as you hear it -- after a brilliant trumpet solo -- you'll hear increasingly caustic comments in his inimitable voice. And it shows some of the ways in which Stephen Foster's music to this day is a source of racial embarrassment and infuriation.

At the same time, the Mills Brothers are singing this in a very straightforward way. They have no problems with the material, but indeed, it's very sentimental and nostalgic, and they do not trip over the word "darkie," which obviously is no longer a word that any of us would care to use. It doesn't give them any offense.

The double nature of the song shows the sort of divided legacy of Stephen Foster, who after all wrote the most famous songs of the 19th century that's in -- written by an American and still, in many ways, define American culture. And we have this dual, double-divided feeling about the music that is exemplified in this recording.

GROSS: Well, let's hear it. Louis Armstrong and the Mills Brothers.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, LOUIS ARMSTRONG AND THE MILLS BROTHERS PERFORMING "OLD FOLKS AT HOME")

MILLS BROTHERS, SINGERS, SINGING: Way down upon the Swanee River
Far, far away -- far away
There's where my heart is turning ever
There's where the old folks stay

All up and down the old creation
Sadly I roam
Still longing for the old plantation
And for the old folks at home

All the world is sad and weary
Everywhere I roam
Oh, (Unintelligible) is how my heart grows weary
Far from the old folks at home

LOUIS ARMSTRONG, MUSICIAN: Now, brothers, it was way down upon the Swanee River

MILLS BROTHERS: Far, far away

ARMSTRONG: Mm-hmm. There's where my heart is turning, ever

MILLS BROTHERS: There's where the old folks stay

ARMSTRONG: Yow-sa. All up and down the old creation

MILLS BROTHERS: Sadly he roams

ARMSTRONG: The one thing -- my heart am still longin' for the old plantation

MILLS BROTHERS: And for the old folks at home

ARMSTRONG: Now, sing brothers

MILLS BROTHERS: All the world is sad and weary everywhere I roam

ARMSTRONG: Yeah, man. Old darkies -- how my heart grows weary

UNISON: Far from the old folks back home

ARMSTRONG: Well, look a here, we are far away from home. Yeah, man

GROSS: Louis Armstrong and the Mills Brothers, singing one of Stephen Foster's most famous songs. My guest Ken Emerson has written a new biography of Foster called "Do Dah."

Well, Stephen Foster certainly had a very complicated relationship to African-Americans and African-American music. And, I mean, on the surface, boy, what a really hateful song the lyrics are -- you know, sung from the point of view of an African-American yearning to be back on that old plantation.

On the other hand, as you point out in your book, Stephen Foster really drew a lot from black music and was inspired by black music. So, at one time, his music both condescends to and is inspired by African- Americans.

EMERSON: Sounds like rock and roll today, doesn't it?

GROSS: It was rock and roll, you said, that connected you to Stephen Foster.

EMERSON: Well, ah...

GROSS: Hard as that may be to believe.

EMERSON: Yes. Well, I began my checkered career as a rock critic, and I was always fascinated from the very beginning: when did the impulse among white teenagers to imitate blacks first begin? Obviously, from Elvis Presley to Beck, that has been an important part of rock and roll. But clearly, it didn't begin with Elvis Presley.

And I sort of pressed it back and thought and listened and learned more and more about the swing era and the Benny Goodmans and the other nice boys from the Jewish projects of Chicago who fell in love with Swing.

And going back to the turn of the century, and songwriters such as George Gershwin and Irving Berlin, who were deeply influenced by African- American music and emulated it, not only in operas like "Porgy and Bess," but in Irving Berlin's first hit song "Alexander's Ragtime Band," which caused him to be mislabeled the "King of Ragtime," when obviously Scott Joplin deserved that title.

But it goes further back, to minstrelcy and black face in the 1830s and 1840s, and to Stephen Foster, and this weird form of American popular entertainment -- the first original American form of entertainment, and that's the minstrel show.

GROSS: The whole blackface era is both a disturbing and fascinating part of American pop music history. What explanations have you been able to come up with for why white people performed in black face and why that became so popular in the 1800s?

EMERSON: Well, among other things, African-Americans represented, in a cruel paradox, to many whites, and still do, a certain kind of freedom -- freedom from bourgeois expectations; freedom from the regimentation of conventional middle-class life.

But what many whites don't realize and, indeed, sometimes African- Americans don't realize, is that that alleged freedom is the result of oppression and exclusion.

So we always have this -- I shouldn't say "we" -- but at the root of both the rock and roll experience and of the minstrel experience which was its predecessor, is this tangled, conflicted feeling of expressing both an oppression and an affection and admiration simultaneously.

GROSS: Ken Emerson is my guest, and he's written a new biography of Stephen Foster called Doo-dah. Let's play another one of his famous songs, from the Southern tradition he had no part of because he grew up in the Pittsburgh area. This is a song called Old Kentucky Home -- one of his really well-known songs.

Tell us about how he wrote this song.

EMERSON: Yeah. Well, let -- this is a song that is very controversial to this day. It is the state song of Kentucky, and we're going to play a particularly camp version of it, which is performed nightly during the summer at the outdoor sound and light theater extravaganza that is held in Bardstown, Kentucky at My Old Kentucky Home State Park.

And the song, as we listen to it for a while, you'll see, sort of epitomizes the sort of the South of cavaliers and crinolines, and yet ironically it was actually inspired by "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a deeply-abolitionist novel.

And the sense of loss here -- and the sense -- is because Uncle Tom is being sold down the river, as he was in the famous novel. So we have here, again, as in the earlier recording by Louie Armstrong, this sort of dual nature.

As a matter of fact, recently two -- several members of the -- African-American members of the Yale Glee Club were scheduled to perform this song as part of a celebration -- a concert celebrating Charles Ives in the context of his music. They refused to sing it. A copy of the song was burned at a meeting by members of the Glee Club and, indeed, another song was substituted.

And yet ironically, here was a song that was inspired by a great abolitionist novel and which no less a leader than Frederick Douglass himself singled out as a song that awakens the sympathies for the slave -- in which anti-slavery principles take root and flourish.

So like all of Foster's music, it's thick with contradictions that to this day, I think, are part of the American experience.

GROSS: Let's hear the version you've brought of My Old Kentucky Home.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, STEPHEN FOSTER'S "MY OLD KENTUCKY HOME," AS PERFORMED AT "MY OLD KENTUCKY HOME" STATE PARK, BARDSTOWN, KENTUCKY)

SINGERS: The sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home
'Tis summer, the children are gay
The corn top's ripe and the meadow's in the bloom
While the birds make music all the day

The young folks roll on the little cabin floor
All merry, all happy and bright
By'n by hard times comes a-knocking at the door
Then my old Kentucky home, good night

Weep no more my lady
Oh, weep no more today
We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home
For the old Kentucky home far away
Far away

GROSS: You know, having heard Old Kentucky Home and Old Folks at Home -- you know, you wonder: what was Stephen Foster's attitude about slavery? He wrote these songs while there still was slavery in the United States.

EMERSON: He certainly did. He was, by inclination and by family -- he was a Democrat. He was -- he was actually related by marriage to James Buchanan, who was the president before Abraham Lincoln, who was trying to hold together the union at any cost and would make any deal necessary to keep the South in.

So he -- Foster was, by inclination, what you would -- what was then called a "doe face" Democrat, and he did not -- he was certainly not an abolitionist.

But he had -- and this, again, is not unlike the contradictions that many Americans feel. On the one hand, his politics were definitely not abolitionist, but his heart and his feelings were very strongly sympathetic with the African-American plight.

The -- this contradiction, I think, is the conflict between sentimentality and self-interest. It's something that, I think, characterizes -- has always characterized -- Americans.

GROSS: My guest is Ken Emerson, and he's a music critic whose written a new book called Doo-dah: Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture.

Ken, let's take a short break and then we'll talk some more. This is FRESH AIR.

Back with Ken Emerson. His new book, Doo-dah is a biography of Stephen Foster.

You've brought a version with you of Jeanie With The Light Brown Hair. Who did you bring singing it? And what do you think of this recording?

EMERSON: Yeah, I think this is a very -- an excellent recording. It's by the operatic baritone Thomas Hamson (ph), who has come out a couple years ago with a CD of Foster's songs and has become a good friend and co-conspirator of mine.

I think what may interest people with this is that it was originally I "Dream of Jennie With The Light Brown Hair." Jennie was the nickname of Stephen Foster's wife, to whom he -- with whom he had an unhappy on-again marriage.

And he wrote this when they were estranged, and -- or had -- it's a little bit unclear -- or possibly just gotten back together again. And he wrote it when he was living in Hoboken, New Jersey, where he set up for about a year.

And when you look at the manuscript, there's something very strange about it, and that is that the "i"s and the "j"s in the manuscript are these sharp, dagger-like downstrokes, which show, instead of any kind of love for this Jennie, an extreme amount of hostility and anger. And you can tell that this is a relationship where you're dreaming of Jennie -- you may be wishing that she were dead.

Anyway, I don't think that Thomas would entirely agree with my interpretation, but I admire his version of the song.

GROSS: Are you sure that wasn't just his handwriting?

EMERSON: No, because actually there's the -- one has the opportunity to examine all his manuscripts at an archive in Pittsburgh now, called the Center for American Music. And this is almost unique among his manuscripts in that sense.

GROSS: OK, well, let's hear Jeanie With The Light Brown Hair.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, THOMAS HAMSON SINGING "JEANIE WITH THE LIGHT BROWN HAIR")

THOMAS HAMSON, SINGER, SINGING:
I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair
Borne like a vapor on the summer air
I see her tripping where the bright streams play
Happy as the daisies that dance on her way

Many were the wild notes her merry voice would call
Many were the wild birds that warbled them all
I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair
Floating like a vapor on the soft summer air

GROSS: Ken Emerson, you know, I think that song is an example of a song that I think people of my generation were born knowing. You didn't necessarily like the song, but you knew the song. I don't know how you knew it -- whether it's because your parents sang it or it was just in the air. But you knew it, even though it was not of your time.

Why do you think songs like Jeanie have endured the way they have?

EMERSON: I think that Stephen Foster really did create popular music as we still recognize it today, and he did it because he took together all these strands of the American experience.

That song is extremely Irish in its origins, just as other songs are extremely African-American; just as others are extremely Italian and operatic; or sometimes German and even Czechoslovakian. For instance, the beat of Oh! Susanna is the beat of a polka.

And he consciously or -- it was hard to talk about the degree of consciousness -- but he clearly, effectively merged them into a single music. And I think he merged them in a way that appeals to the multi-cultural mongrel experience of America in its history and culture.

And so these songs became embedded in our consciousness -- so deeply embedded that just as you said that you didn't know where you heard them, and I'm sure you didn't even know who wrote them. Foster's songs became so absorbed into the American experience that it was assumed by many that they were folk songs...

GROSS: Right.

EMERSON: ... and there was no Stephen Foster -- that he just sort of disappeared like Zelig in the Woody Allen film, into the, you know, the far fringes of the frame of our consciousness, even as his songs are, I think, in everybody's memory.

And this is still happening. I've been working -- the last couple of months, I've given some talks and worked several times with high school students in Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn -- a very multi-cultural school where there were many Pakistanis, Hispanics, Soviet Jews.

And here, even when you're talking about immigrants and people who came to America within the last couple of years, you say: have you ever heard of Stephen Foster? No -- says no. But all you have to do is hum or sing a few bars of I Dream of Jeanie or Beautiful Dreamer or the Camptown Races, and people light up. They recognize it. It's something -- it's like a passport to America.

GROSS: When I was taking piano lessons when I was young, a lot of the sheet music books would have Stephen Foster songs in it. I think there were two reasons for that: one is because of his enduring popularity, but I think the other was because they're in the public domain. You don't have to pay copyrights to put them in the songbooks.

EMERSON: Yes, exactly. And as a matter of fact, some of the songs only became hits in the 1930s when there was briefly a radio strike against the ASCAP, which at that point was the only licensing company for music. And so, radio stations were scrambling for anything in public domain in order to play on the radio.

But there's also a third reason why Foster's music was there: they're easy to play.

GROSS: Right. Right.

EMERSON: And Foster's music was deliberately written in a way that a beginning or certainly intermediate pianist could play it with no difficulty.

GROSS: My guest is rock critic Ken Emerson. His new book is called Doo-dah: Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

Back with rock critic Ken Emerson, author of Doo-dah: Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture.

I know when I told a few people here that we were going to be talking to you about your Stephen Foster biography, I got a couple of real eye-rolls, like: hah, Stephen Foster -- what? Are they kidding?

I can imagine the reaction you got from friends in the rock world when you told them your book was going to be about Stephen Foster.

EMERSON: Yeah, they thought I was taking leave of my senses.

LAUGHTER

You know, it's hardly -- I mean -- but on the other hand, I think that we all have an interest, and I think that -- I know that, I mean, Gareo Marcus (ph) talked to me about this a little bit when I undertook this, and that -- I mean, the way that Gareo and other serious students of rock and roll -- Bob Krisco (ph) would be another example -- all of us have been very interested in its origins; in its roots.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

EMERSON: I mean, the way that we were taught that rock and roll didn't exist until the 1950s, when suddenly in the person of Elvis Presley, rock, blues, and country music joined together. That just doesn't work. This is -- there's the -- the racial mixture and complexity of our music just goes back far longer, and that's, to me, the more interesting aspect of this.

And I know that, in terms of talking to my friends, who are rock critics past and present -- it's something that interests almost all of them too -- this trying to find more of a history to our popular music. After all, at first, perhaps when we're all 13 or 16 years old, we were thrilled by the newness of rock and roll. Maybe it's as we're getting older, we want to understand its oldness as well.

GROSS: Your book raises so many interesting issues about pop music, and its early history in the United States. But I'm wondering if, in writing the Stephen Foster book, if you also got a new appreciation of his melodies?

EMERSON: Oh, unquestionably. I mean, one of the things you realize is that when you listen to -- or you can't listen, because it's not available in recording -- but when you play or you look at the sheet music of the thousands of other songwriters.

As minstrel music became more popular and as people tried to emulate Stephen Foster's own success, this -- the country was awash with sheet music. And yet only Foster's songs survived. The idea that anybody could write a dozen songs that still exist today in our minds is amazing.

I also -- I came to really respect his craft, which I finally learned was much more sophisticated than I had originally imagined. There's one song he wrote, for instance, which deliberately quotes two measures of Schubert and then quotes two measures of a Robert Burns Scottish ballad, so that you have sort of a Scottish lay and a German leet (ph), you know, spliced.

And that kind of wit and craft is something that people didn't realize Foster possessed when we used to think of him as sort of this naive folk poet with his finger on the pulse of the American soul, in a sort of a salt-of-the-earth way. He was a much more conscious writer who didn't just compose his songs. He contrived them.

GROSS: You've brought with you a record that I think will successfully bring together your interest in rock music and your interest in Stephen Foster. Do you want to introduce this for us?

EMERSON: Yes, well, this is a song that actually was not a great hit during his time, but in the last decade, it's been his most frequently recorded song. One reason, I'm sure, is because it's neither as saccharine as Beautiful Dreamer or I Dream of Jeanie. On the other hand, it does not have blackface lyrics that are an embarrassment and an offense to today's ears.

And that's "The Hard Times Come Again No More," which has been recorded recently by Emmy Lou Harris; by Bob Dylan; Thomas Hamson has recorded it; the McGyrical Sisters (ph). And I actually think that of my fave -- I know that my favorite version is the least-known of them all, and that's by the -- a singer named Sid Straw (ph), and this is a beautiful arrangement by Van Dyke Parks (ph).

And the song, I think became popular in the very late '80s at the -- when there was a momentary recession at the end of Bush's term -- the recession that, even though we'd begun to recover from it, resulted in Bill Clinton's election.

And it struck an economic nerve that I think is still touchy in our insecure society today, where even if the stock market is booming, we're all being downsized. So this is Hard Times Come Again No More by Sid Straw.

GROSS: And before we hear it, let me say to you, Ken, thank you very much for talking with us about your biography of Stephen Foster, and that biography is called Doo-dah. The author, Ken Emerson.

EMERSON: Thank you very much.

GROSS: Here's Sid Straw.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, SID STRAW SINGING STEPHEN FOSTER'S SONG "HARD TIMES COME AGAIN NO MORE")

Let us pause in life's pleasures
And count its many tears
For we also sorrow with the poor
There's a song that will linger forever in our ears
Called hard times come again no more

It's the song and the sigh of the weary
Hard times, hard times come again no more
Gloomy days have you lingered around my cabin door
Oh hard times come again no more

Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest: Ken Emerson
High: Ken Emerson talks about the subject of his new biography, Stephen Foster. Foster was a 19th century songwriter who had a strong impact on American music. He was the composer of many familiar songs including, "Oh! Susanna," "Camptown Races," and "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair." Emerson says Foster was heavily influenced by black music. And even though the music was often performed in the offensive black-face style, his songs sometimes betray a sympathy for African-Americans. His biography is called "Doo-dah!: Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture."
Spec: Music Industry; History; African-Americans
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright (c) 1997 National Public Radio, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. under license from National Public Radio, Inc. Formatting copyright (c) 1997 Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission. For further information please contact NPR's Business Affairs at (202) 414-2954
End-Story: Stephen Foster Bio
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