http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5OiMfM3txk

Stephen Foster (1826-1864) may be America’s first professional song writer. During his most productive years, he composed such American standards as Oh, Susanna (1848), Camptown Races (1850), My Old Kentucky Home (1853) and Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair (1854). Much of his music was written for minstrel shows, where it was performed in blackface. In what was actually an enlightened attitude for his time, Foster instructed that his songs should be performed in a pathetic, rather than a humorous style (pathetic meaning “to engender compassion”). During this time, he also eliminated dialect from his lyrics and stopped referring to his music as “plantation songs”, preferring the term “American melodies”.

Biographical information drawn from the University of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.