NELLY WAS A LADY

Created on 29/11/2022
Latest update on 21/03/2024

Artist: Christy Minstrels
Author: Stephen Foster
Year: 1849

Subtitled A Beautiful Ethiopian Melody. Foster was a child of his time, born the 4th of July 1826, the day the USA was 50 years old but at the same time a full generation before their Civil War between States. No wonder how Ethiopians were depicted, described and treated in songs. Blackface ruled, defencelessness enabled caricatural portraiteering. Still, with songs like this one, Foster must have been the first to sympathise with the enslaved underclass. The Lady in question was a black woman, passed away and mourned by her husband on the Mississippi bottomland they'd been toiling the best part of their lives. Nelly Was A Lady gave its title to a Stephen Foster biopic released in 1947, to mark the song's centennary. Goes to show it's importance among the rest of his canon (see also Beautiful Dreamer, Oh! Susanna, Camptown Races, Old Folks At Home, Jeanie With The Light Brown Hair and Hard Times Come Again No More). Nelly is also the subject of one of the 66 essays in Bob Dylan's The Philosophy Of Modern Song ('22).

Covers:

1910:

Frank Coombs [The Sweetest Voice in Vaudeville; for Columbia]

1919:

Alma Gluck

1928:

Nat Shilkret

1935:

Golden Gate Quartet

1948:

Nelson Eddy

1987:

Steve Turner

2004:

Alvin Youngblood Hart [on Stephen Foster tribute Beautiful Dreamer]

2018:

Eliza Carthy & Norma Waterson

Contact


If you noticed blunt omissions, mis-interpretations or even out-and-out errors,
please let me know:

Arnold Rypens
Rozenlaan 65
B-2840 Reet (Rumst)

info@originals.be

No Facebook No Twitter