By Maik Strosahl
Stephen Foster was a creative genius. In his early years, he taught himself to play the clarinet, guitar, flute, and piano with no formal instruction. At twenty, he started writing songs that have survived since the 1840s to this day. One of his first successful songs was “Oh! Susanna,” which was sung by 49ers panning for gold and was still belted out by out-of-tune 1970s grade schoolers such as myself. In his short 37 years on this earth, he wrote many others, including “Camptown Races”; the Kentucky state song, “My Old Kentucky Home”; and Florida’s state song, “Old Folks at Home (Swanee River)” – a song that Ray Charles recorded a version of for his first pop hit, “Swanee River Rock (Talkin’ ’Bout That River)."
