The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #55931   Message #872118
Posted By: masato sakurai
22-Jan-03 - 08:54 AM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: De Camptown Races (Stephen Foster)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: De Camptown Races
"No. 3" is not written on the page and should be deleted (the description was copied and pasted from the Levy site).

At least four editions were published in 1850 alone. The one linked to above (my second one; copyrighted Feb. 19, 1850) is the first edition and "the earliest known copy", according to Steven Saunders and Deane L. Root (The Music of Stephen Foster: A Critical Edition, vol. 1, Smithsonian Institution Press, p. 465), James J. Fuld (The Book of World-Famous Music, 4th ed., Dover, 1995, pp. 158-159), and John Tasker Howard (Stephen Foster, America's Troubadour, Tudor, 1934, pp. 179-181). Saunders and Root (p. 465) give this note: "Foster succeeded in having the names of the Campbell Minstrels and New Orleans Serenaders removed from the title pages of later copies of the song..., fulfilling a promise he had made to minstrel performer E.P. Christy (see America's Troubadour, pp. 179-82). Sometime after this change, the title page was again altered ...; this time the title was changed from GWINE TO RUN ALL NIGHT to CAMPTOWN RACES by burnishing and reengeraving the original plate. The caption title on page 3 of all Benteen impressions, "'GWINE TO RUN ALL NIGHT.' / or / DE CAMPTOWN RACES" was never altered." Foster's letter (on the change of the names; dated Feb. 23, 1850) is quoted also in Harvey B. Gaul's Minstrel of the Alleghenies (1934, p. 59) (Click here).

For comparison, see other 1850 editions:

Foster's Plantation Melodies. Camptown Races
Publication: Baltimore: F.D. Benteen, 1850
Performer: As Sung by The Christy's Minstrels

Title: Camptown Races. A Favorite Ethiopian Song
Publication: Baltimore: F.D. Benteen, 1850.

~Masato