Roger Wagner Chorale -
Songs Of Stephen Foster (1954)
Vinyl Rip Of The Day.
This one came from my mom's music collection. I played it a lot as a kid but haven't heard it in more than 50 years.
Growing up in L.A., the Roger Wagner Chorale was ubiquitous, presenting classical music, light classics, and even folk music at the old Philharmonic Auditorium, the Hollywood Bowl and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. This album of Stephen Foster favorites was their first non-classical title for Capitol Records. It proved to be hugely successful; Discogs tells us there were at least 15 different reissues around the world.
Stephen Foster was the preeminent American composer of the mid-19th Century. By the time of his death at age 37 from an accident, many of his songs had become popular standards even as alcohol had reduced him to destitution. Today, Foster is a controversial figure due to the racial stereotypes that recur in his lyrics. However, his poetic, almost mythical imagery contrasts starkly with the violent, ugly and demeaning caricatures of African Americans employed by other songwriters at the time. According to Wiki:
"He sought to 'build up taste… among refined people by making words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order'. In the 1850s, he associated with a Pittsburgh area
abolitionist leader named Charles Shiras and wrote an abolitionist play himself. Many of his songs had Southern themes, yet Foster never lived in the South and visited it only once during his 1852 honeymoon. "
