On today's episode, Jennie talks with Emily Bingham, author of My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song. "My Old Kentucky Home" is one of Foster's travel songs. His music traveled further from home than the songwriter ever did, and the song has reverberated, becoming an essential part of institutions like the Kentucky Derby. Emily is a native of Louisville and a visiting professor at Bellarmine University. We discuss Emily's research on the Foster Hall Quartet, G.M. Robinson, E.W. Hammond, W.W. Wolfek, and C.E. Hicks. And of course, we amble in the Ohio River Valley, the conurbated region of Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio that both Emily and Stephen Foster called home.

The Foster Hall Collection holds a recording of the Quartet performing Foster’s “My Brudder Gum,” shared here in full with permission from the Center for American Music at The University of Pittsburgh.

To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com.

On today's episode, Jason talks with Cody Ebright-Jones about The Stephen Foster Story, a musical performed outdoors during the summer months in Bardstown, Kentucky. Cody is an independent scholar with a recent PhD in Musicology from the University of Michigan and studies the intersections of music, race, and history in the United States. As we discuss, The Stephen Foster Story is a complex, evolving mosaic that reflects contemporary attitudes about race in popular culture as much as it does the history of early American popular music.

To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com.

On today's episode, Jennie talks with Renee Lapp Norris, Professor of Music at Lebanon Valley College. Renee researches blackface minstrelsy and performance. She defines and challenges the form and its working-class roots in today's conversation. In this episode, we consider the split between performance and composition in the 19th century, and how the fact that Stephen Foster composed rather than performed for the blackface stage might have enhanced his reputation in the 20th century. Of course, Foster the composer was linked through financial and artistic ties to Christy the performer. Renee also introduces us to the Christy song "Happy Are We" and the musical genre of the contrafact.

To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com.

On today's episode, we’ll hear from Kazuko Miyashita about Stephen Foster’s music in Japan. Kazuko is a Professor Emerita and has published extensively on the influence of Foster’s music in her native country. Due to the time difference, Kazuko recorded a brief summary of her work and shared that with me for the podcast rather than attempting a live interview. Her contribution is highly valued, though, as exploring the influence of Foster’s work outside of the United States is an important frontier in the future of Foster studies.

Continuing with the international theme of this episode, my co-host Jennie will share some of her own experiences with Foster’s music while in China, and tell us some of the context behind “Oh! Oksana,” the Russian language cover of Stephen Foster’s “Oh! Susanna” that plays at the end of each episode. We’ll end the episode by playing “Oh! Oksana” in full, adapted and performed by Dan Veksler.

To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com.

On today's episode, Jason talks with Esther Morgan-Ellis about Foster’s memory in the state of Florida. Esther is an Associate Professor of Music at the University of North Georgia, but in her travels further south she discovered a unique history of pageantry and music-making at the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park in White Springs, Florida. Esther studies and writes about participatory music-making practices of the past and present. In our conversation she offers unique insight into how a chance lyric in a famous Foster song and an apocryphal story about his antebellum travels to the South created an annual singing competition in the mid-twentieth century that still reverberates in Florida today.

To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com.

On today's episode, Jason talks with Jennie about her research into Stephen Foster's influence on American popular culture. Jennie is a lyric essayist and scholar of American literature. She has written two books, Blood at the Root: Lynching as American Cultural Nucleus and Captive City: Meditations on Slavery in the Urban South. She is also well known to Foster scholars for her 2008 essay “Long Time I Trabble on de Way”: Stephen Foster's Conversion Narrative" published in the Journal of Popular Music Studies. I got to talk with Jennie about Foster's connection to pop music icons like Al Jolson and Elvis Presley, and her own unique insight into Foster's struggle with alcohol addiction.

To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com.

https://sunypress.edu/Books/B/Blood-at-the-Root

https://www.pennpress.org/9781512826685/captive-city/

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1533-1598.2008.00152.x

In this episode, Jennie talks with Jason about his research into Stephen Foster and popular music copyright in early America. We also talk about how we got here and reflect on the behind-the-music narrative of Stephen Foster's rise and fall in conversation with pop culture history. Jason is an Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Clayton State University.

To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com.