Thanks, Connie, for the red, white, and blue Tribute To Our Troops.
LONG day today....I never had 5 minutes to myself, altho I took time to have lunch with an old friend. We ate at Longstar...yummy!
Did you have a good Friday? Easy commute? Any more piggie/coyote issues? *HUGS*
Hope you get some resting time this weekend.
”Oh! Susanna” was a hit, but you never would have known it from the contents of Foster’s wallet. He had been burned badly, but he learned two important lessons from the experience: (1) he could write successful songs, and (2) he needed to protect his artistic property.
Foster understood that the minstrel shows of the era were the way to gain an audience for his songs, but he decided to humanize the people in his songs and convey a sense that everyone shared the same needs, free or slave. He told the performers of his songs not to make fun of slaves, but to get their audiences to feel compassion for them. Foster was the reforming figure of the minstrel movement in American entertainment. Some of this came from the fact that Pittsburgh was a center for abolitionism in Pennsylvania, and one of Pittsburgh’s great abolitionist figures, Charles Shiras, was a boyhood friend of Foster’s.