'Jeanie With The Light Brown Hair' performed by Pete Lashley (Stephen Foster)

petelashley.com
petelashleymusic
iTunes link - itunes.apple.c...
This version of the Stephen Foster classic 'Jeanie With The Light Brown Hair' is available on the Pete Lashley album 'It All Comes Round'. It was recorded by Sam Parkinson at Stonegate Studios in Bentham (Yorkshire Dales, UK)
This mid 19th Century American folk song is played by Pete Lashley with great sensitivity. He sings it in a rich reflective nostalgic tone and the finger picked guitar enhances the emotion of the piece. "Now the nodding wild flowers may wither on the shore, while her gentle fingers will lull them no more, I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair, floating like a vapour on the soft summer air".
Stephen Foster was born in Pittsburgh in 1826. He became a bookkeeper with his brother's steamship company when he was 20 and thus moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. Here he wrote 'Oh! Susanna' a song popular during the California Gold Rush. In the 1850's Foster signed a contract with the Christy Minstrels and proceeded to write some of his best known songs - 'Camptown Races', 'Nelly Bly', 'My Old Kentucky Home', and 'Jeanie With The Light Brown Hair'.
During this time of slavery and constitutional unrest in North America, Foster significantly instructed Caucasian performers of his songs not to mock slaves but to get their audiences to feel compassion for them. Foster was progressive in another sense in that he was one of the first to try and make a living as a professional songwriter, an almost impossible task given that there was such a limited scope for music copyright and composer royalties at the time. Foster died in 1864 a year before the ending of the four year long American Civil War.
Though in his lifetime Foster may not have ever made a fortune from his passion his musical legacy is legendary within the sphere of American folk song.
In 1941 when an ASCAP (American Society Of Composers and Publishers) strike prevented modern music of the time being broadcast across the nation, the broadcasters decided to use songs from the public domain. 'Jeanie With The Light Brown Hair' was used on a regular basis and became even better known throughout the US as an American classic.

[@AbrahamDiner]

very nicely sung, thank you