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Nelly was a lady
Excerpt: 'Stephen Foster & Co.'KEN EMERSON (EDITOR)
Although some of Foster's blackface lyrics are abhorrent -- the second verse of "Oh! Susanna" is a shocker -- at their best they imbue African Americans with a dignity and pathos that were unprecedented. No songwriter had called a black woman a lady before "Nelly Was a Lady." Unbeknown to most of the throng that sings bowdlerized lyrics on Derby Day, "My Old Kentucky Home" does not celebrate cavaliers and crinolines in the Old South -- it invokes Uncle Tom's Cabin and indicts slavery for breaking up black families.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126035325
Although some of Foster's blackface lyrics are abhorrent -- the second verse of "Oh! Susanna" is a shocker -- at their best they imbue African Americans with a dignity and pathos that were unprecedented. No songwriter had called a black woman a lady before "Nelly Was a Lady." Unbeknown to most of the throng that sings bowdlerized lyrics on Derby Day, "My Old Kentucky Home" does not celebrate cavaliers and crinolines in the Old South -- it invokes Uncle Tom's Cabin and indicts slavery for breaking up black families.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126035325
Nelly Was a Lady
(published by Firth, Pond & Co., N.Y., 1849)
Down on de Mississippi floating
Long time I trabble on de way
All night de cotton-wood a toting
Sing for my true-lub all de day
Nelly was a Lady
Last night she died
Toll de bell for lubly Nell
My dark Virginny bride
http://www.stephen-foster-songs.de/foster019.htm
Down on de Mississippi floating
Long time I trabble on de way
All night de cotton-wood a toting
Sing for my true-lub all de day
Nelly was a Lady
Last night she died
Toll de bell for lubly Nell
My dark Virginny bride
http://www.stephen-foster-songs.de/foster019.htm
10 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
I am a collector of antique and vintage sheet music and in love with American popular song from 1840-1940. My father sang many Stephen Foster songs, especially when out driving in the car. 