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The Sun Shines Bright
When I was married to wife #1 she took me to Bardstown and My Old Kentucky Home.
Did I do the tour of the house? I have a faint memory of stripey wallpaper and a guide in a crinoline, but that might have been someplace else.
Bardstown also has a brewery and a shop selling toy soldiers. At least it did back in the 70s. Shortly before our visit to the toy soldier shop a sales assistant had been murdered on the premises.
By a discarded lesbian lover. With a sword.
I bought a little chap in a tricorne hat and a green jacket. I always had a slightly creepy feeling about him.
Anyway, having done the Bardstown tour, I have a proprietorial feeling about Stephen Foster.
I think of him as a cross between Edgar Allan Poe and Paul McCartney. Beautiful dead women and beautiful deathless melodies.
He was a Northerner, of course. He only ever visited the South on holiday. For all his romantic feelings about Dixie, he was an abolitionist and a passionate admirer of Lincoln. His recruiting songs are as toe-tappingly compulsive as anything by George M Cohan.
That's what's the matter
The rebels have to scatter.
We'll make them flee by land and sea
And that's what's the matter!
His work is surprising hard to get hold of on CD. You guys take him far too much for granted.
There's a relatively unknown song called "Ah, Let The Red Rose Bloom Alway" which is just about the loveliest thing ever.
And for some reason "Oh Susanna" always brings a lump to my throat. It's like "I am the Walrus"- a trifling piece of nonsense with a great black emptiness behind it.
I had a dream the other night
When every thing was still,
I thought I saw Susanna
A comin down the hill;
The buck-wheat cake was in her mouth,
The tear was in her eye;
Says I, "I'm coming from the South
Susanna don't you cry."
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Actually - if you listen to FolkAlley.com, you can hear some of the artist on this CD - singing some of the music on the CD.
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I have a little wooden woman he might like. She sits on my mantel next to an iron house, and she gives me the creeps. I'm afraid to move her away from her iron house, because she might not like it and make some trouble.
Want her?)
When I was in love with Paul the Trumpet Player, we visited the Stephen Foster memorial carrilon located near the Georgia-Florida borders and the Suwanee River.
Poor romantic Stephen Foster, who never got to see the river he dreamed about.
Although--in a way, maybe it's just as well. His mind saw things so much better than the reality could have been.
Here's a Stephen Foster album available on Amazon.
(I saw at the museum a pianoforte used by Beethoven. I reached through the ropes and touched one key. Ah.)
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The chap in the tricorne has gone. At least I think he has. He may be skulking around somewhere. One can never be sure.
That looks like a good album. And it has "Nelly Was A Lady". I love that song. Wife #1 used to play it on the piano. Thanks for pointing it out to me. I think I'm going to have to buy it.
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I don't blame you for not wanting her.
I think I'll let her live in the woods this summer. Won't she like that?
Of course, she might want to return at night...
I think I should stop reading Algernon and Holzer!
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You mustn't banish her to the woods.
Stick her in an envelope and put her in the post.
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Can you let her live in your village, perhaps in the enchanted forest? I think she'd like that. She'll feel very big, after all these months of living next to those scouts.
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They'll think she's a troll.
BTW, We've gone ahead and ordered the Stephen Foster CD.
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What a charming description.
Gordon Lightfoot wrote a song in tribute to Stephen Foster, and it has the same kind of dreamy melody that some of Foster's songs have. It's called Your Love's Return (Song for Stephen Foster) Unfortunatley there's no way you can hear the tune...
My grandfather used to sing "Oh Susannah" to me. I can remember sitting on his lap and listening to his voice rumble in his chest....
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