Doo-Dah!: Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture
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Book Overview
"A colorful, panoramic view of 19-century American society--with P. T. Barnum, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Foster's relative President James Buchanan all glimpsed in the background. The author's enviably broad knowledge of pop music . . . allows him to draw provocative and intelligent parallels with figures from American culture past and present."--Washington Times Stephen Foster (1826-1864) was America's first great songwriter and the first to earn his living solely through his music. He composed some 200 songs, including such classics as "Oh Susanna," "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair," "Old Folks at Home (Way down upon the Swanee River)," and "Camptown Races (Doo-dah Doo-dah )." He virtually invented popular music as we recognize it to this day, yet he died at age thirty-seven, a forgotten and nearly penniless alcoholic on the Bowery. The author reveals Foster's contradictory life while disclosing how the dynamics of nineteenth-century industrialization, westward expansion, the Gold Rush, slavery, and the Civil War infused his music, and how that music influenced popular culture.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0306808528
ISBN13:9780306808524
Release Date:August 1998
Publisher:Da Capo Press
Length:416 Pages
Weight:1.33 lbs.
Dimensions:1.1" x 6.2" x 9.2"
Customer Reviews
2 ratings
Doo Dah is the BEST BIOGRAPHY OF ALL TIME!!!!!!!
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 26 years ago
If you haven't read Doo Dah, buy it today!!!! Doo Dah was the best book that I have ever read in my entire life. Unfortunately, the book is not as good as the writer is handsome, and if it was it would be on the best seller list, and I know because he is my uncle. So, show your support of American culture and buy this stupendous biography, by the Master writer, the all time best, the one and only Ken Emerson.
Bow-wow!
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 27 years ago
This is another boonie dog book review from Wolfie and Kansas. Ken Emerson's book "Doo-dah! Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture" is well-written and informative. This is a "life and times" book, rather than a narrowly focused biography. However, the times of Stephen Foster, and the social and cultural history which Emerson discusses, are, like Foster's music, generally more interesting than the sometimes racist and alcoholic Foster himself.Our one complaint about "Doo-dah!" is the short shrift Mr. Emerson gives to one of Stephen Foster's biggest hits in 1857, a song entitled "Old Dog Tray". We would have like to have learned more about this song. Foster's minstrel songs were performed by white men in blackface. Was "Old Dog Tray" performed by humans in dogface?
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