My Old Kentucky Home

artist:Louis Armstrong

, writer:Stephen Foster

Song Info

Title: My Old Kentucky Home

Artist: Louis Armstrong

Writer: Stephen Foster

Song Types: Folk, OldTime

Key: G

Info: "My Old Kentucky Home, Good-Night!" is a sentimental minstrel song written by Stephen Foster, probably composed in 1852. It was published in January 1853 by Firth, Pond, & Co. of New York. Foster was likely inspired by Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, as evidenced by the title of a sketch in Foster's sketchbook, "Poor Uncle Tom, Good-Night!" Some have claimed that Foster was inspired by visits to the Bardstown, Kentucky plantation called Federal Hill in the 1850s. However, no direct or contemporary evidence of this visit has surfaced, and this claim has been contested by most prominent Foster scholars, including William Austin, Ken Emerson, and John Tasker Howard.

Interpretations of the song vary widely. Most scholars of Foster agree that the song is a sentimental minstrel song, in contrast with the earlier bawdy comic minstrel songs like "Oh Susanna" and "De Camptown Races." Frederick Douglass wrote in his 1855 autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom that the song "awakens sympathies for the slave, in which antislavery principles take root, grow, and flourish". However, the song's inclusion in blackface minstrel shows, "Tom shows" (stagings of Stowe's novel of varying degrees of sincerity and faithfulness to the original text), and other settings have clouded its reception greatly.

Although the frequency of its recording dropped off as the century progressed, "My Old Kentucky Home" continued to be used as material by some of the major popular singers of the day. Versions were recorded by Kate Smith, Bing Crosby, and Al Jolson.[ A version by operatic contralto Marian Anderson was released in Japan and Paul Robeson recorded his version for an English company while living in London in the late 1920s. The song continued to find expression in non-traditional forms, including a New Orleans jazz version by Louis Armstrong[ and a swing version by Gene Krupa

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My Old Kentucky Home

artist:Louis Armstrong

, writer:Stephen Foster

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Song Info

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