Stephen Collins Foster
Popularly associated with the California Gold Rush, the song is occasionally (and incorrectly) called
“Banjo on My Knee”.
In 1843, the year Daniel Decatur Emmett established the Virginia Minstrels as the first blackface troupe
in New York. Foster, 16, was working as a bookkeeper for his brother’s business in Pittsburgh.
His brother, Morrison Foster,was a friend of the early circus blackface clown, Dan Rice, and the young Stephen
came under Rice’s influence.
Foster also became aware of the new fad of “Ethiopian” songs. He also met a member of the minstrel troupe,
the Sable Harmonists, who performed his first attempt, “Old Uncle Ned.” A contest in 1847 given by The Eagle Saloon
stimulated the song called “Away Down Souf.”
His next attempt was titled “Susanna” – advertised at “A Grand Gala Concert” as “[A] new song, never before given
to the public.” The writer and musician Glenn Weiser has suggested that the song was influenced by an existing work,
“Rose of Alabama” (1846), with which it shares some similarities in lyrical theme and musical structure.
A local music store, Peters & Field bought the song for $100, but before they could publish it,
it was pirated by a New York publisher who printed it with the name of E. P. Christy as author. Christy’s Minstrels
were rapidly becoming the most popular group
in the Bowery theater district of Manhattan, and were to be the chief performers of Foster’s minstrel songs in the 1850s.
Probably by fortuitous coincidence rather than design, the song appeared in the public eye at the same time as the new
polka fad was arriving from Europe. While minstrel songs prior to this time were considered uncouth, “Oh! Susanna!” thus
provided an entry to the middle-class market.
In 1927 Columbia 15000D series Records released the same song titled “O’Susannah” in April (also under Regal Zonphone
G20240) recorded Dan Hornsby (grandfather of Nikki Hornsby) singing with Young Brothers Tennessee Band.