Camptown Races

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Camptownraces.gif Camptownraces2.gif
Arrangement of Camptown Races for voice and guitar from 1852

Camptown Races audio sample ? / i is a song by the American composer Stephen Foster that first appeared in print in 1850. The play is also known under the alternative title Camptown Ladies , its text describes in exaggerated African American English events during a horse race . Audio file / audio sample

music

Camptown Races is limited in its musical means to simple twists and turns that underline the folk character of the piece. Like all 201 songs and instrumental sets published by Foster is in a major - key held write most early editions D major before.

The melody in 2 / 4 ¯ clock is strictly diatonic and, as shown in Sample sheet, with only the three major chords tonic , subdominant and dominant be accompanied. Formally, the song consists of an eight-bar verse , which is repeated once - with new lyrics - and a subsequent eight-bar chorus .

Foster does not fall back on typical stylistic features of Afro-American music , which was only emerging at the time . The characteristic syncopated rhythm to which the syllables “doo-dah!” Are sung is also found very frequently in this form in folk music in the British Isles (for example as a variant of the Scotch snap ).

text

Occasionally attempts are made to connect the scene of the disorganized, turbulent hustle and bustle reported in the song with a town called Camptown , which actually exists in Foster's home state of Pennsylvania . However, the tradition of the blackface comedy, the tone of which is included in the song, alluded to the southern states in a clichéd way during Foster's lifetime . The Foster biographer Ken Emerson also points out that the composer does not sing about his closer homeland in any of his songs. The improvised horse race that provides the framework for the "plot" of Camptown Races , on the other hand, fits in quite well with the makeshift tent camps ( camptowns ) that existed, for example, for the workers along the railway lines , which were then newly created in large numbers .

De Camptown ladies sing dis song, Doo-dah! doo-dah!
De Camptown race-track five miles long, Oh, doo-dah day!
I come down dah wid my hat caved in, Doo-dah! doo-dah!
I go back home wid a pocket full of tin, Oh, doo-dah day!

Refrain:

Gwine to run all night!
Gwine to run all day!
I'll bet my money on de bob-tail nag,
Somebody bet on the bay.
De long tail filly and de big black hoss, Doo-dah! doo-dah!
Dey fly de track and dey both cut across, Oh, doo-dah-day!
De blind hoss sticken in a big mud hole, Doo-dah! doo-dah!
Can't touch bottom wid a ten foot pole, Oh, doo-dah-day

refrain

Old muley cow come on to de track, Doo-dah! doo-dah!
De bob-tail fling her ober his back, Oh, doo-dah-day!
The fly along like a rail-road car, Doo-dah! doo-dah!
Runnin 'a race wid a shootin' star, Oh, doo-dah-day!

refrain

See dem flyin 'on a ten mile heat, Doo-dah doo-dah!
Round de race track, the repeat, Oh, doo-dah-day!
I win my money on de bob-tail nag, Doo-dah! doo-dah!
I keep my money in an old tow-bag, Oh, doo-dah-day!

As a result of its association with the Minstrel Shows , Camptown Races is nowadays often viewed as a song with a racist undertone, although Stephen Foster himself had no sympathy for the slavery that still prevailed in the USA of his time , advocated the cause of the Union in the Civil War and supported his compositions endeavored to paint a less discriminatory image of black Americans than was common around 1850.

history

Stephen Foster (1826–1864)

The song first appeared as part of Stephen Foster's Plantation Melodies collection under the title "Gwine to Run All Night" at FD Benteen in Baltimore and WT Mayo in New Orleans . Like other compositions by Foster, for example Oh! Susanna , the piece was often performed in the context of minstrel shows and thus became an integral part of musical folklore in the USA during the 19th century . The first minstrel troupe to perform Camptown Races publicly were Christy's Minstrels , who had specialized in interpretations of Foster's music since 1847. Therefore, the "world premiere " of the number in 1850 is ascribed to them.

In Giacomo Puccini's 1910 opera La fanciulla del West , the striking syllable “Doo-da, doo-da day” alludes to Foster's song. Charles Ives used the theme several times in his compositions, for example it appears, presented by the horn , in his 2nd symphony . Earl Wild varied it in 20 Variations on a Theme of Stephen Foster for piano and orchestra (1991).

The well-known melody was also frequently used in jazz . It is one of the preferred licks of double bass player Slam Stewart , who is known for his intrinsically humorous quotes , while keyboardist Jim Beard wrote a stylistically more modern version under the title Ode to the Doo Da Day , made famous by tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker .

Camptown Races owes its international fame above all to the cartoon series Looney Tunes , where it is sung by Bugs Bunny and in particular by the rooster Foghorn Leghorn - whose signature melody the song can be considered.

Mel Brooks plays in the opening scene of his 1974 resulting Western - spoof Blazing Saddles significantly to the already mentioned racist implication of the song at: As the leader of a gang of white gunslingers a group of black railroad workers prompting a " good ole nigger work song to sing" for him , these Cole Porters intone I Get a Kick out of You (from 1934), a decidedly urban hit from the Great American Songbook . The grotesque comedy of the scene is based, apart from the macabre reinterpretation of the anachronistically quoted previous title, on the fact that it is the white bandits who then start the Camptown Races .

The Oxford English Dictionary uses the word doodah with explicit reference to Foster's composition as a slang expression for "dithering", "restless, excited".

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ MGG , Vol. 1, p. 425
  2. ↑ Collections with an academic claim also indicate an at least possible connection, cf. for example here .
  3. ↑ Margaret E. Kenny: Article Stephen Collins Foster in: MGG, Vol. 4, pp. 591ff.
  4. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, 1989. sv doodah

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