Camptown Races was written by Stephen Foster who is often considered the father of the American song. He wrote the song in the 1850s, and it was published not long after with a little guitar accompaniment. There are a lot of people who are trying to learn more about songs and composition in general, and the only way to make light of that is to look at how popular this song has become. Stephen Foster just wrote a song that he thought would sound nice, but it has become a nursery rhyme that a lot of kids will love. The history of the song is obvious, but how did the lyrics become a part of children’s culture and not just the racetrack?
The Track
We have been racing horses forever, and they have been at race tracks since the early days of the western world. These tracks became quite popular in the early days of the northeast, and those tracks are usually still there. That is what Stephen Foster latched onto because he wanted to write about something that felt like an American past-time. He also wanted to be sure that the people who were not going to the track knew a lot about what that culture was like. You might not have heard of the track before, and now you have when you hear the song.
The History
The Camptown Races were actually in a work camp in Pennsylvania, and that is where Stephen Foster got the idea for the song. The lyrics came from a tiny racetrack that he watched while he was there, and it was all just a way of observing how the people of the day were entertaining themselves. He got it published by FD Benteen, and the publication made it very popular along with him. This is the way that a lot of people became familiar with the songs that Stephen Foster wrote, and he became a part of the Americana fabric.
The Kids
This song because a simple rhyming song that kids could sing in school, and it was really important for the kids to learn something like this because it makes them think about what has happened in the past. A lot of kids have to have perspective on life that comes from things like this. You probably have no idea how this would work unless you actually looked up how the song was made and how Stephen Foster did most of his work.
The Collection Of Songs
The collection of songs is something that people have been doing for a long time, and they have found out a lot of ways to collect the sounds that make the most difference to them. They will seek out things that they can do with these songs like Stephen Foster did, and you might find out that the kids go out and try to learn how the world has found all these songs because they might be surprised about many of them were folk songs.