Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair

DESCRIPTION: "I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair, Borne, like a vapor, on a summer's air." The singer praises her voice, her "day-dawn smile," etc., but sadly concludes, that he is "never more to find her where the bright waters flow."
AUTHOR: Stephen C. Foster
EARLIEST DATE: 1854 (sheet music by Firth, Pond & Co.)
KEYWORDS: love separation nonballad
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (7 citations):
Fireside-Book-of-Folk-Songs, p. 100, "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" (1 text, 1 tune)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 249, "Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair" (1 text)
Emerson-StephenFosterAndCo, p. 53, "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" (1 text)
OneTuneMore, pp. 8-9, "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" (1 text, 1 tune)
Fuld-BookOfWorldFamousMusic, pp. 311-312, "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair"
Dime-Song-Book #8, p. 23, "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" (1 text)
DT, JEANBRWN
Roud #38034
ALTERNATE TITLES:
I Dream of Jeanie
NOTES [410 words]: Jeanie was Foster's wife, Jane McDowell Foster. Had she known the uses to which her image would be put (from hair advertisements in the 1860s to idiotic television shows a century later), I can only think she would have filed for pre-emptive divorce. (As it was, the marriage was deeply troubled.)
Legman regards "Jeanie" as an adaption (he calls it plagiarism) of "To Daunton Me," found in the Scots Musical Museum (#182). But Legman often saw kinship that others do not see; Fuld says there is "no similarity between the two songs," and I have to agree that I see no points of contact between either the text or the tune. According to Howard, p. 241, if Foster was plagiarizing anyone, it was himself; the first part of the tune of "Jeanie" is quite close to "Willie We Have Missed You," which Foster (based on his working notebook) had written slightly earlier. It appears from the notebook that Foster wrote "Jeanie" while he and his wife were separated (although Morneweck, p. 451, claims it comes from one of their reconciliations), and it seems not unlikely that he wrote it because he missed her. Howard comments that it is "one of Stephen's very few successful love songs"; otherwise, Howard suggests, Foster didn't write very well about love.
Spaeth, p. 116, says of this song, "Jeanie is the song that America discovered during those incredibly dull months when radio decided that it could get along without copyrighted music. Before that it had been considered a choice bit of rather obscure Fosteriana."
TaylorEtAl, p. 111, points out that many Foster songs have a heroine whose name was a variation on Jeanie: this song, "Little Jenny Dow," "Jenny's Coming O'er the Green," "Jenny June." Could all these be tributes to Foster's wife? It wouldn't surprise me; in "Little Jenny Dow," even the last name is reminiscent of Jane's family name McDowell.
Morneweck, pp. 451-452, says that Morrison Foster, Stephen's brother, never used the name "Jeanie" of the song. "It was always 'Jennie with the Light Brown Hair,' and Jennie you will find in Stephen Foster's original manuscript book. Jane was not called Jeanie by her family, but was often addressed by the affectionate diminutive, Jennie. It is more likely that the publishers suggested to Stephen that he change it to the more euphonious and romantic Jeanie, as more appealing to public taste. But Jennie it was to Stephen, and Jennie it was to his brother Mit [i.e. Morrison]."- RBW
Bibliography

Howard: John Tasker Howard, Stephen Foster, America's Troubadour, 1934 (I use the 1939 Tudor Publishing edition)
Morneweck: Evelyn Foster Morneweck (Stephen Foster's niece), Chronicles of Stephen Foster's Family, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1944
Spaeth: Sigmund Spaeth, A History of Popular Music in America, Random House, 1948
TaylorEtAl: Deems Taylor et al, A Treasury of Stephen Foster, Random House, 1946

Last updated in version 6.6
File: FSWB249

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography