Foster's biographer Ken Emerson considers "Oh! Susanna" so important that he states that American popular music as we know it was born on September 11, 1847, when the song was publicly sung for the first time. Virtually any part of the melody is instantly recognizable for just about any American. Two or three notes from it are sufficient to suggest a time and place in a movie. It became associated with the California Gold Rush. Yet most people don't know many of the words—fortunately, for the song was actually a blackface dialect number whose words contain some appallingly racist lines. However, a little thought also makes the song's subtext clear: the singer clearly identifies himself as an African American, yet he blithely sings of coming from Alabama, travelling freely by riverboat to New Orleans. For all its lightheartedness, "Oh! Susanna" depicts a slave's escape attempt.

Although Susanna is asked not to cry for the singer throughout, mostly the words are nonsense: "It rained all night the day I left, The weather it was dry. The sun so hot I froze to death ..."; "I jumped aboard the telegraph and traveled down the river,"; I shut my eyes to hold my breath Susanna don't you cry." But the last verse suddenly becomes a serious love song. (We've dropped the "darkface" language.) The song gained popularity, and by 1848 an Austrian piano virtuoso from Paris was playing an Impromptu he composed on "Oh! Susanna" and another minstrel tune of the day. Morrison Foster, the author's brother, asserted that the publishers ripped Foster off, and he ended up giving it away for free. The song did, however, make Foster a famous name.

© Joseph Stevenson, Rovi