Jeanie with the light brown hair

There is a popular misconception that Stephen Collins Foster (1826—1864) found success as a song-writer writing many of his songs aiming to ‘humanise’ the black American slaves. He was a meticulous worker and sometimes spent months perfecting the lyrics of a song. His first success was Oh! Susanna (1848) and as his popularity grew he moved with his young family to New York to be near his publishers. This was not a success and Jane, his wife and Marion, his daughter, moved back to Pittsburgh in 1854. Foster wrote Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair as a result of her continued absence. Philip Sparke’s arrangement of this beautiful song will make an excellent slowinterlude in any concert.