Remembering Stephen C. Foster

[dahoude]

Stephen C. Foster was born on July 4th, 1826. His contributions and musical accomplishments will be sang and remembered for many years to come. He is indeed one of my favorites. Here is a very good link to an extensive listing of some of his music, some complete with lyrics and midi files that some of you may find useful and enjoy.

http://www.pdmusic.org/foster.html

Regards;

Dan Houde

[BSpringer]

Thanks Dan.

I wanted to add this link as well:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/foster/
Its a nice PBS website on Stephen Foster's history, including images of original sheet music, recorded songs, and an interesting 'Special Feature' section on Minstrelsy. This website is a companion piece to the PBS television history documentary series "American Experience".

Respectfully,

[Daniel Partner]

Thanks, Dan, for reminding us about the birthday of Stephen Foster.

I spent the winter arranging sixteen of his minstrel tunes for the minstrel banjo. Centerstream Publishers is publishing these in the fall. The book should be very useful to the historical musician. It will include the standard notation and banjo tablature for the arrangements, the original lyrics, historical notes for each song, and other background information about Foster and the minstrel banjo. Ed Sims is busy doing the research for the notes. We'll also have an extensive bibliography.

Ed and I (dba The Free and Accepted Minstrels of Old New Orleans) are going to record a CD of these songs next month (August). The recording should be available by the New Year.

Daniel Partner
American Music 1830-1865
www.danpartner.com