Mitch Miller - Camptown Races & Oh! Susanna (HD)

Camptown Races (1850)
"This delightful nonsense song, considered an American folk song, was created by Stephen Foster during a happier period of his life, when he was only twenty-four years old, around 1850. This was the year in which he married, in which Millard Fillmore became our thirteenth president, Harriet Beecher Stowe was completing "Uncle Tom's Cabin", and the mad California Gold Rush was already in full swing.

The song was first published in 1850 under the title "Gwine To Run All Night." Stephen Foster, wild about minstrels, got Ed Christy's Minstrels to feature the song, and thus in a short time it became a big hit. People from New York to San Francisco sang and whistled this tune on the street, at work, and in their homes without ever knowing who wrote it.

In spite of this enormous popularity it was not much of a money-maker, since in seven years it sold only some 5000 copies and Foster's royalties totaled slightly over a hundred dollars. Thus in 1857 Stephen Foster sold all his rights to the song.

The Forty-Niners, traveling overland and by sea, loved this song and often added their own parodies. "Camptown Races" achieved sizable popularity in England after being introduced by Ed Christy's Minstrels. This song was featured in the 1952 movie I Dream of Jeanie. As time and American popular-song history have gone on, this song has taken its place as one of Stephen Foster's best.

Oh! Susanna (1847)
"Although this song was composed it is today considered an American folk song. It has been highly popular for over a hundred years - there have been many parodies - and it was the theme song of the Forty-Niners during the California Gold Rush. Words and music are by Stephen Foster.

Stephen Foster was a Fourth of July baby in 1826, the very day John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died, when our country was about 50 years old. Stephen was the son of the wealthy pioneer Colonel William Barclay Foster, and during his lifetime he wrote some two hundred songs. He composed "Oh Susanna" when he was only twenty years old.

This song had its first public performance as a novelty number with banjo accompaniment on September 11th 1847, at the Eagle Ice Cream Saloon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and his audience loved it. Stephen Foster gave this and another song to friend William Peters who published them in 1848 and wound up making over $10,000 on them. It is doubtful that Foster received any of the money.

"Oh Susanna" became an immediate hit throughout the entire country, which at that time extended all the way to the Mississippi River. It became a favorite with the minstrels (whom Foster loved so dearly) and of the people. This song is well known throughout our country, any time and any place. It was used in the 1951 movie "Overland Telegraph" and in the same year another movie bore its title. "Oh Susanna" will probably last forever in America."
~The American Song Treasury by Theodore Raph