Piano Sheets > Stephen Collins Foster Sheet Music > Old Black Joe (ver. 1) Piano Sheet

Old Black Joe (ver. 1) by Stephen Collins Foster - Piano Sheets and Free Sheet Music

  
About the Song
"Old Black Joe" is a parlor song by Stephen Foster (1826-1864). It was published by Firth, Pond & Co. of New York in 1853. Ken Emerson, author of Doo-Dah!, indicates that Foster's fictional Joe was inspired by a servant in the home of his father-in-law, Dr. McDowell of Pittsburgh. The song is not written in dialect, Emerson writes, "yet the bluntness of Joe's blackness and his docility reduce Old Black Joe to the status of Old Dog Tray rather than its owner, to simply another white man's possession prized solely for its loyalty." He believes the song "epitomizes Foster's racial condescension" but W. E. B. Dubois points to the song as a piece standing apart from the debasing minstrel and "coon" songs of the era. Emerson believes that the song's "soft melancholy" and its "elusive undertone" (rather than anything musical), brings the song closest to the traditional African American spiritual. Stephen.    Download this sheet!
About the Artist
Stephen Collins Foster (July 4, 1826 – January 13, 1864), known as the "father of American music", was the pre-eminent songwriter in the United States of the 19th century. His songs — such as "Oh! Susanna", "Camptown Races", "Old Folks at Home" ("Swanee River"), "Hard Times Come Again No More", "My Old Kentucky Home", "Old Black Joe", "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair", and "Beautiful Dreamer" — remain popular over 150 years after their composition. "Old Black Joe" is a parlor song by Stephen Foster (1826-1864). It was published by Firth, Pond & Co. of New York in 1853. Ken Emerson, author of Doo-Dah!, indicates that Foster's fictional Joe was inspired by a servant in the home of his father-in-law, Dr. McDowell of Pittsburgh. The song is not written in dialect, Emerson writes, "yet the bluntness of Joe's blackness and his docility reduce Old Black Joe to the status of Old Dog Tray rather than its owner, to simply another white man's possession prized solely for its loyalty." He believes the song "epitomizes Foster's racial condescension" but W. E. B. Dubois points to the song as a piece standing apart from the debasing minstrel and.
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