Old Folks at Home Written by Stephen C. Foster Way down upon de Swanee Ribber Far, far away Deres wha my heart is turning ebber Deres wha de old folks stay All up and down de whole creation Sadly I roam Still longing for de old plantation And for de old folks at home Chorus All de world am sad and dreary Ebrywhere I roam Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary Far from de old folks at home! 2nd verse All round de little farm I wandered When I was young Den many happy days I squandered Many de songs I sung When I was playing wid my brudder Happy was I Oh, take me to my kind old mudder! Dere let me live and die 3rd Verse One little hut among de bushes One dat I love Still sadly to my memory rushes No matter where I rove When will I see de bees ahumming All round de comb? When will I hear de banjo strumming Down in my good old home? A little extra history of thay made the song Stephen C. Foster, one of Americas Bestloved musical storytellers, wrote The Swanee River Old Folks at Home in 1851. A memorial center at White Springs honors Foster, who authored about 200 songs during his prolific career The Suwannee River flows southerly from the Okeefenokee Swamp in Georgia to the Gulf of Mexico in Florida, topographically slicing the Florida panhandle from the rest of the state After Foster wrote The Swanee River in 1851, he sold it to famed minstrelman E. P. Christy. Foster is reported to have chosen the Swanee because its twosyllable cadence fit nicely into the music he had composed. It could not have been due to a familiarity with the rivers Florida section, since Foster never visited the state Through House Concurrent Resolution No. 22 in 1935, S. P. Robineau of Miami successfully entered The Swanee River as the official state song, replacing Florida, My Florida, which had been adopted as the State Song in 1913. By 1935 Fosters rightful position as a writer and composer had been established
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