Old Folks at Home

"Old Folks at Home"
1851 edition
Music by	Stephen Foster
Lyrics by	Stephen Foster
Published	1851
Language	English
Form	Strophic with chorus

"Old Folks at Home" (also known as "Swanee Ribber" or "Suwannee River") is a minstrel song written by Stephen Foster in 1851.

Composition

Written for performance by the New York blackface troupe Christy's Minstrels, the song has E. P. Christy, the troupe's leader, appearing as its creator on early printings of the sheet music. Christy had paid Foster to be credited, something Foster himself had suggested though later regretted.

According to legend, Foster had composed most of the lyrics but was trying to give a name to the river of the opening line and asked his brother to suggest one. The first suggestion was "Yazoo" (in Mississippi), which despite fitting the melody perfectly, Foster rejected. The second suggestion was "Pee Dee" (in South Carolina), to which Foster said, "Oh pshaw! I won't have that." His brother then consulted an atlas and called out "Suwannee!" Foster said "That's it exactly!" He wrote it in immediately (misspelling it "Swanee" to fit the melody).

Foster himself never saw the Suwannee or even visited Florida, but the popularity of the song initiated tourism to Florida to see the river and since 1935 it has been the official state song of Florida, although in 2008 the original lyrics were expurgated.

Controversy

Written in the first person from the perspective of a black slave (at a time when slavery was legal in half of the states of the US), the song has its narrator "longing for de old plantation," which has long drawn criticism as romanticizing slavery, although Foster himself supported the North during the American Civil War and supported abolition of slavery.

A word now long reckoned an ethnic slur, "darkies", that is used in the lyrics has become such an embarrassment for singers and audiences alike that at public performances words like "lordy," "mama," "darling," "brothers" or "dear ones" are typically used in place of the offensive word.

The text is written, as is usual in minstrel songs, in a cross between the dialect generally spoken by black American slaves (as well as their descendants) and standard American English — the former being attested to as in use as late as the 1940s in the works of the black Floridian folklorist Zora Neale Hurston, and is an archaic form of contemporary African American Vernacular English — and this is seen by some as racism against black Americans.

In practice, the pronunciation as written in dialect has long been disregarded and the corresponding standard American English usage has been sung, as witnessed by the song's performances at the 1955 Florida Folk Festival.

As the State Song of Florida

As the official state song of Florida, "Old Folks at Home" has traditionally been sung as part of a Florida governor's inauguration ceremony. However, over time, the lyrics were progressively altered to be less offensive; as Diane Roberts observed:

Florida got enlightened in 1978; we substituted "brothers" for "darkies." There were subsequent revisions. At Jeb Bush's second inauguration as governor in 2003, a young black woman gave a moving, nondialect rendition of "Old Folks at Home," except "still longing for the old plantation" came out "still longing for my old connection." Perhaps someone confused Stephen Foster's lyrics with a cell phone commercial.

In his 2007 inauguration ceremony, Charlie Crist decided to not include the state song, but rather to use in its place, "The Florida Song," a composition written by a black Floridian jazz musician, Charles Atkins. Crist then encouraged state Senator Tony Hill, who was the leader of the legislature's Black Caucus, to find a new song. Hill joined forces with state Representative Ed Homan and the Florida Music Educators Association to sponsor a contest for a new state song and in May 2007, the Florida Music Educators Association commenced an initiative inviting all citizens of Florida to submit their entries for a new state song and on January 11, 2008, the song "Florida (Where the Sawgrass Meets the Sky)" was selected as the winner. The Florida legislature considered the issue and ultimately adopted "Where The Sawgrass Meets The Sky" as the state anthem while retaining as the state song "Old Folks At Home", replacing its original lyrics with a bowdlerized version approved by scholars at the Stephen Foster Memorial at the University of Pittsburgh.; Governor Crist stated that he was not pleased by the "two songs" decision, but signed the bill, creating a new state anthem and establishing the reworded version of the State Song by state statute, rather than by resolution, like the 1935 decision.

Lyrics

"Old Folks at Home", by Stephen Foster, 1851

Way down upon de Swanee Ribber,
Far, far away,
Dere's wha my heart is turning ebber,
Dere's wha de old folks stay.
All up and down de whole creation
Sadly I roam,
Still longing for de old plantation,
And for de old folks at home.

Chorus
All de world am sad and dreary,
Eb-rywhere I roam;
Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary,
Far from de old folks at home!

2nd verse
All round de little farm I wandered
When I was young,
Den many happy days I squandered,
Many de songs I sung.
When I was playing wid my brudder
Happy was I;
Oh, take me to my kind old mudder!
Dere let me live and die.

3rd Verse
One little hut among de bushes,
One dat I love
Still sadly to my memory rushes,
No matter where I rove.
When will I see de bees a-humming
All round de comb?
When will I hear de banjo strumming,
Down in my good old home?

Popular culture

• Dvorak's Humoresque Number 7, written in the 1890s, is musically similar and is sometimes played along with "Old Folks at Home". The Library of Congress's National Jukebox presents a version with soprano Alma Gluck and violinist Efrem Zimbalist.

• The song is mentioned in Irving Berlin's "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (1911) in the line, "If you want to hear the 'Swanee River' played in ragtime" and featured in 1936's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Gershwin's "Swanee" (1919) is a takeoff on the Foster song, and even contains the line, "I love the old folks at home." The song was recorded by boogie woogie pianist Albert Ammons as "Swanee River Boogie" and by Ray Charles as "Swanee River Rock." Under the title "Swanee River," the song was recorded by Tony Sheridan in the early 1960s and is sometimes erroneously listed as an early recording by The Beatles due to their association with Sheridan at that time. The melody was used by The Beach Boys on their 1963 album Surfer Girl, for the song "South Bay Surfers", although there is no writing credit listed for anyone other than the band members. The band also covered the song by connecting it with "Ol' Man River"; it can be found as a bonus song on their Friends/20/20 double-LP.

• Science fiction writer John Wyndham's story Pillar to Post features a 20th century American marooned in the far future, who is terribly moved by finding a single surviving record from his time: "And the music which conjured a whole world from the aged dust? No, it was not a Beethoven symphony, nor a Mozart concerto; it was, I confess, 'The Old Folks at Home'...".

• The song is referenced in the 1935 Rodgers and Hart musical, Mississippi. W. C. Fields asks a piano player what song he's playing. It is "Swanee River", which is "brand new" in the time the film is set. Fields disparages the song, saying its tune is unmemorable. He then finds himself singing the song as he walks away.

• Django Reinhardt recorded a version called "Swanee River".

• Swanee River is also the name of an Irish rock group situated in Derry.

• In the Flintstones episode "The Flintstone Canaries", the song was called Stoney River. Barney and Fred sing the chorus for an audition to land a spot on the musical TV series "Hum Along With Herman".

• In the Honeymooners episode $99,000 Answer, Ed Norton plays the song on his piano as a warmup before each song he plays for his friend Ralph Kramden to try to guess correctly in preparation for his appearance on a television quiz show.

• A remixed dance version of this song was included in the game Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix for the Nintendo GameCube called "Frozen Pipes".

• David Cross performs a piece of this song as Tobias Funke in the ninth episode of Arrested Development, titled "Storming the Castle".

• A reference is made by the character Roy Pitt to his wife April in Terrence McNally's play Bad Habits.

• Chuck Berry's rock adaptation of the song is on his 1975 self-titled album on Chess Records.

• Bill Chase recorded a rock version of this song entitled "Swanee River" with his band on the album Ennea released in 1972. The song is credited as Stephen Foster/Bill Chase.

• On the 1951 Tom and Jerry cartoon entitled "Casanova Cat", there is a scene where Tom blackens Jerry's face with cigar smoke and puts Jerry on a plate to dance while a musical rendition of "Old Folks at Home" plays in the background (it has to be noted that this scene has been deleted from most United States TV broadcasts, but is reinstated in the VHS and DVD versions).

• During the third period of every men's hockey game, the Cornell Big Red Pep Band's tuba section plays a version of this song behind the opponents' bench, while the Lynah Faithful sing along with "Hey (opponent's school), die, drop dead, go home ('you suck' if at an away game)!"

• This song also used to be printed on the red and white boxes used by Kentucky Fried Chicken back in the early 1960s before the company changed their image.

• In the Oscar-winning film The King's Speech (2010) would-be King George VI, following his therapist's advice, sings to the tune of "Swanee River" the phrases he can't pronounce due to stammering.

External links

• Closeup of Foster's notebook page with first draft of "Old Folks at Home", including substitution of "Pedee" with "Swannee"
• New York Times article on Foster mentioning "Old Folks at Home"
• www.negrophile.com article on lyrics, alternate state songs
• Recording of "Old Folks at Home" at the 1955 Florida Folk Festival; made available for public use by the State Archives of Florida
• Alternate recording by The 97th Regimental String Band