Author: Emily Bingham
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 1985901323
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 417
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Book Description
"The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home." So begins an American standard, first published as a minstrel song, that became dear to the hearts of millions and ultimately was enshrined as the Kentucky Derby's sonic centerpiece—a popular selling point for Kentucky tourism. Emily Bingham's masterful decoding of Stephen Foster's 1853 ballad reveals that the song was always about slavery and how white Americans wanted to remember it. Acknowledging her own entanglement in this legacy, Bingham takes readers on the journey of a melody, from its inception by a white northerner, to its enormous success on the blackface circuit, in recordings by Al Jolson and Bing Crosby, and on the pages of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, to its countless screen appearances, including Shirley Temple movies, The Simpsons, and Mad Men. For almost two centuries, "My Old Kentucky Home" has never been just a song—it continues to be a resonant, changing emblem of America's original sin, whose blood-drenched shadow haunts us still. My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song investigates the tune's hidden history, lodged in the nation's cultural DNA, and ends with a startling solution for what to do with this artifact of race and slavery.
Author: Randall Capps
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bardstown (Ky.)
Languages : en
Pages : 140
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Book Description
The Rowman family lived in Pennsylvania then moved to Kentucky in 1782.
Author: JoAnne O'Connell
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442253878
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 497
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Book Description
The Life and Songs of Stephen Foster offers an engaging reassessment of the life, politics, and legacy of the misunderstood father of American music. Once revered the world over, Foster’s plantation songs, like “Old Folks at Home” and “My Old Kentucky Home,” fell from grace in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement due to their controversial lyrics. Foster embraced the minstrel tradition for a brief time, refining it and infusing his songs with sympathy for slaves, before abandoning the genre for respectable parlor music. The youngest child in a large family, he grew up in the shadows of a successful older brother and his president brother-in-law, James Buchanan, and walked a fine line between the family’s conservative politics and his own pro-Lincoln sentiments. Foster lived most of his life just outside of industrial, smoke-filled Pittsburgh and wrote songs set in a pastoral South—unsullied by the grime of industry but tarnished by the injustice of slavery. Rather than defining Foster by his now-controversial minstrel songs, JoAnne O’Connell reveals a prolific composer who concealed his true feelings in his lyrics and wrote in diverse styles to satisfy the changing tastes of his generation. In a trenchant reevaluation of his NewYork Bowery years, O’Connell illustrates how Foster purposely abandoned the style for which he was famous to write lighthearted songs for newly popular variety stages and music halls. In the last years of his life, Foster’s new direction in songwriting stood in the vanguard of vaudeville and musical comedy to pave the way for the future of American popular music. His stylistic flexibility in the face of evolving audience preferences not only proves his versatility as a composer but also reveals important changes in the American music and publishing industries. An intimate biography of a complex, controversial, and now neglected composer, The Life and Songs of Stephen Foster is an important story about the father of American music. This invaluable portrait of the political, economic, social, racial, and gender issues of antebellum and Civil War America will appeal to history and music lovers of all generations.
Author: Elliot Paul
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Domestic relations
Languages : en
Pages : 456
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Book Description
Memories of a year spent in Louisville in 1909-1910.
Author: Young Ewing Allison
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bardstown (Ky.)
Languages : en
Pages : 48
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Book Description
Describes the history of the home of Judge Rowan and his descendents.
Author: Willard Rouse Jillson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Historic buildings
Languages : en
Pages : 24
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Book Description
A sketch of the house where the song "My old Kentucky home" was written in 1852.
Author: Annie Harrod
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780578852706
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
My Old Kentucky Home is an illustrated songbook for 0-5-year-olds, showcasing the beauty of Kentucky. The whimsical illustrations give a light-hearted feeling as you and your little one sing at bedtime.
Author: Stephen Collins Foster
Publisher: Forgotten Books
ISBN: 9780331863017
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 40
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Book Description
Excerpt from My Old Kentucky Home 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. They hunt no more for the possum and the coon On the meadow, the hill, and the shore; They sing no more, by the glimmer of the moon, On the bench by the Old cabin door. The day goes by like a shadow o'er the heart, With sorrow where all was delight. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Author: Roy Young
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 055724773X
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 136
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Book Description
Author: Tourist and Travel Division, Kentucky Dept. of Public Information
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bardstown (Ky.)
Languages : en
Pages : 5
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Book Description
