Oh! Susanna

DESCRIPTION: Nonsense song about a man going to see his beloved Susanna. The singer tells his love, "Oh Susanna, Oh! don't you cry for me, I've come from Alabama, wid my banjo on my knee." The song describes the impossible means he took to reach her
AUTHOR: Stephen C. Foster
EARLIEST DATE: 1848 (sheet muysic by C. Holt Jr.)
KEYWORDS: love travel dream humorous
FOUND IN: US(MA,SE)
REFERENCES (26 citations):
Jackson-PopularSongsOfNineteenthCenturyAmerica, pp. 152-155, "Oh! Susanna" (1 text, 1 tune)
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore3 408, "Oh, Susanna!" (2 texts plus 2 excerpts and mention of 4 more; the "E" text has a chorus from elsewhere)
Brown/Schinhan-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore5 408, "Oh, Susanna!" (1 tune plus a text excerpt)
Scarborough-OnTheTrailOfNegroFolkSongs, p. 103, (no title) (1 fragment, with a verse probably from "Napper" but the chorus of this song)
Henry-SongsSungInTheSouthernAppalachians, p. 198, "Susanna" (1 text)
Shoemaker-MountainMinstrelsyOfPennsylvania, pp. 82-83, "Oh! Susanna" (1 text) (p. 69 in the 1919 edition)
Shay-BarroomBallads/PiousFriendsDrunkenCompanions, pp. 8-9, "O! Susanna" (1 text)
Greenway-FolkloreOfTheGreatWest, p. 67, "(I dreamt a dream the other night)" (1 fragment)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 244, "Oh, Susanna" (1 text)
Seeger-AmericanFavoriteBallads, p. 46, "Oh, Susanna" (1 text, 1 tune)
Emerson-StephenFosterAndCo, p. 6, "Susanna" (1 text)
Fireside-Book-of-Folk-Songs, p. 40, "Oh, Susanna!" (1 text, 1 tune)
Messerli-ListenToTheMockingbird, pp. 73-75, "Susanna (Oh! Susanna)" (1 text)
Heart-Songs, pp. 172-173, "Oh! Susanna" (1 text, 1 tune)
Fuld-BookOfWorldFamousMusic, pp. 404-405, "Oh! Susanna"
Harbin-Parodology, #312, p. 75, "O Susanna" (1 text, 1 tune)
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, p. 167, "Oh! Susanna" (notes only)
Rodeheaver-SociabilitySongs, p. 41, "Oh! Susanna" (1 text, 1 tune)
Zander/Klusmann-CampSongsNThings, p. 17, "Oh, Susanna" (1 text, 1 tune)
Zander/Klusmann-CampSongsPopularEdition, p. 13, "Oh! Susanna" (1 text)
BoyScoutSongbook1997, p. 107, "Oh, Susanna" (1 text)
National-4HClubSongBook, p. 28, "Oh! Susanna" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, OSUSANNA*
ADDITIONAL: John Allen Wyeth, _With Sabre and Scalpel_ (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1914 ("Digitized by Internet Archive")), ("Run, nigger, run; patter-roller catch you"), p. 63 (1 verse)
Aline Waites & Robin Hunter, _The Illustrated Victorian Songbook_, Michael Joseph Ltd., 1984, pp. 78-79, "Oh! Susanna" (1 text, 1 tune)
Harry Dichter and Elliott Shapiro, _Early American Sheet Music: Its Lure and Its Lore, 1768-1889_, R. R. Bowker, 1941, plate 21, shows the original sheet music cover
ST RJ19152 (Full)
Roud #11745
RECORDINGS:
Vernon Dalhart, "Oh Susanna" (Romeo 539, 1928)
Vernon Dalhart w. Carson Robison & Adelyne Hood, "Oh! Susanna" (Victor 21169, 1928)
Light Crust Doughboys, "Oh! Susanna" (Vocalion 03345, 1936)
Chubby Parker, "Oh, Susanna" (Silvertone 25013, 1927; Supertone 9191, 1928)
Riley Puckett "O! Susanna" (Columbia 15014-D, c. 1925; rec. 1924; Silvertone 3261 [as Tom Watson], 1926)
Rice Brothers Band, "Oh Susannah" (Decca 5804, 1940)
Pete Seeger, "Oh, Susanna" (on PeteSeeger18)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Prospecting Dream" (tune)
cf. "Oh California" (tune)
cf. "Oh, Susanna (II)" (tune)
cf. "Snowed In" (tune)
SAME TUNE:
Oh California (File: ShaSS114)
Oh, Susanna (II) (File: Hugi116)
Song of the Death Valley Prospectors (File: CAFS2664)
The Empire Club (File: TPS063)
Snowed In (File: Clev046)
Trentham (File: Clev118)
The Mules Ran Off (by Pearl R. Nye) (File: Salt062)
The Shipping Agents (by Charles Thatcher) (File: BaRo047)
The Handcart Song (Missionary) (File: ChMS066)
I'm Off for California (File: CAFS652)
The Seven Devil Mines (File: LDC140)
There Comes a Reckoning Day (File: LDC480)
O Susanne! (a Danish song built around Fosters's tune but about a boy who became a sailor; Rochelle Wright and Robert L. Wright, _Danish Emigrant Ballads and Songs_, Southern Illinois University Press, 1983, #59, p. 137)
Old Mose Song ("I'm don on running with der old machine") (Wolf-AmericanSongSheets p. 115)
That Cottage Home (Wolf-AmericanSongSheets p. 155)
Oh, Luella ("Oh, Luella, won't you mention me," referring to the ability of Louella Parsons to bring performers to fame and prominence) (Jacob Weisberg, _Ronald Reagan_ [a volume in the _American Presidents_ series edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.], Times Books, 2016 (references are to a 2015 advance reader copy that probably has the final pagination but lacks an index or other reader helps), p. 19)
I'm On My Way to Canada ("I'm on my way to Canada, That cold and dreary land; The sad effects of slavery, I can no longer stand") (Foner, p. 90)
"Song" (by T.R.) ("I dreamt a dream the other night, When everything was still; I dreamt I saw Ben Butler's boys Upon the White House hill.... O Blaine and Cleveland, why did they ever try?") (Foner, p. 260)
The Swiss Referendum ("Fair morning comes, behold the dawn Of Direct Legislation") (by B. M. Lawrence) (Foner, p. 282)
NOTES [567 words]: This song is one of the best examples of Stephen Foster's bad luck and lack of skill as a businessman. The first (unauthorized) printing never mentioned Foster's name, though it associates the song with the Christy Minstrels. Foster then gave the piece away; the next printing had his name on it, but if he received any money at all, it was a flat up-front fee. Howard, pp. 141-144, lists twenty different printed editions from 1848 to 1851, from ten different publishers; some are new arrangements, and the titles vary, but they're the same song. Howard says that most of the editions don't even mention Foster's name.
There is perhaps some sort of irony that that earliest, pirated, printing, by C. Holt Jr. of New York, is now immensely valuable; according to TaylorEtAl, p. 31, only three copies were known in the mid-twentieth century.
This was one of Foster's very earliest pieces, and (along with "Uncle Ned") one of his first big hits. According to DeVoto, p. 134, 'in March of [1846] a twenty-year-old Pittsburg youth failed of appointment at West Point, and so at the end of the year he went to keep books in his brother's commission house at Cincinnati. He took with him the manuscripts of three songs, all apparently written in this year, all compact of the minstrel-nigger tradition. One celebrates a lubly collud gal, Lou'siana Belle. In another an old nigger has no wool on the top of his head in the place whar de wool ought to grow.... And in the third American pioneering was to find its leitmotif for all time: it was 'Oh Susanna!'"
Morneweck, p. 313, quotes the announcement for what seems to be the world premier of this song, from the September 11, 1847 Daily Commercial Journal. It is an advertisement for Andrews' Ice Cream Saloon promoting a concert which featured, in addition to "The Old Iron City," "Away Down Souf," "Allegheny Belle," "Picayune Butler," "The Floating Scow," and "The gal wid de blue dress on," "SUSANNA -- A new song, never before given to the public" (Morneweck, pp. 313-314). One of the performers at this event was Nelson Kneass, who wrote the standard tune for "Ben Bolt."
The early popularity of this song seems to be indicated by the existence of a Gold Rush version, a fragment of which is quoted by Laura Ingalls Wilder in Little House in the Big Woods (chapter 13):
Oh, Susi-an-na, don't you cry for me,
I'm going to Cal-i-for-ni-a,
The gold dust for to see.
Emerson, pp. 39-40, notes that Foster has a musical sister, Charlotte Susanna, who died young. He seems to believe the verse
I had a dream de udder night, when ebry ting was still,
I thought I saw Susanna dear a coming down de hill
was inspired by her.
On p. 127, he declares that "September 11, 1847, is a firm date for the birth of pop music as we still recognize it today," when the Eagle Saloon debuted the song. Emerson goes on to declare the song to be more deeply rooted in American consciousness than any other.
Morneweck, volume I, p. 259, suggests that another line, "I jumped aboard de Telegraph, An trabbelleed down de ribber," was inspired by an actual boat, the Telegraph, which Stephen's brother Morrison had written. This might be a bit of family tradition, since Morneweck was Morrison Foster's daughter -- but it strikes me as equally possible that Stephen was just doing one of his bits of nonsense; if a message can travel by telegraph, why couldn't a person? - RBW
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File: RJ19152

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