CD salutes the songwriting of Stephen Foster
New Nashville-based nonprofit American Roots Publishing, an arts and education organization, is heralding its formation with the Aug. 24 release of a CD compilation called "Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster."
The 18-track disc features 19th-century American classics such as "Beautiful Dreamer," "My Old Kentucky Home," "Camptown Races," "Old Folks at Home," "Oh! Susanna," and "Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair." Among the performers are Raul Malo, Roger McGuinn, John Prine, Michelle Shocked and Pete Anderson, Mavis
Coproducer Steve Fishell says inspiration for the CD came from a Bob Dylan quote that credited Foster as the source of Dylan's songwriting knowledge.
Executive producer and ARP founder Tamara Saviano notes that the set is the first CD tribute to "the first songwriter of America," as Foster's New York publisher hailed him. Foster died in 1864 at 37 with 38 cents in his pocket.
"There have been tributes to Dolly Parton and Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash and all these contemporary songwriters, but never to America's first great songwriter. And everyone else follows in his footsteps," Saviano says.
"We thought one had certainly been done before -- but it hadn't been. So it made sense for this to be American Roots Publishing's first project, because our mission is to preserve American culture, and Stephen Foster is where it all begins."
Saviano recognizes that while Foster songs such as "Oh! Susanna" and "Camptown Races" once were staples of children's music classes, today's young listeners have probably never even heard of Foster. Hence the impetus for ARP, whose primary goals are to preserve American regional culture through literature and art; to link artists and communities through education programs aimed at preserving, exposing, and celebrating regional traditions; and to support American artists who honor those traditions.
Following the release of "Beautiful Dreamer," ARP will team with Future Farmers of America in a program premiering at the FFA convention in October in Louisville, Ky. The program will feature such teaching tools as the album, the PBS "American Experience" documentary on Foster, a teachers guide prepared by Boston public TV station WGBH, and Foster sheet music. Some of the artists participating in the CD will speak and perform.
ARP looks to expand the program to other groups in 2005. It will raise funds by marketing the album to Americana music fans.
Referring to Ken Emerson, the Foster biographer who wrote the liner notes, Saviano says, "He quoted [classical baritone] Thomas Hampson as saying that Foster is the trunk of the tree of American music -- the first to take elements of European music and American slave music and cobble it together to make American music. And he wrote these songs without any radio, recording, or performing rights -- yet many became hits based solely on the strength of the songs."
Future ARP plans include two book projects: a photo essay with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's John McEuen, chronicling 40 years of the legendary group, and Texas singer/songwriter Joe Ely's first novel, "Super Reverb."
