# Doo-dah!

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/ken-emerson/doo-dah/9780306808524

![Doo-dah!](https://quivercdn.com/covers/da-capo-press/ken-emerson/doo-dah_978-03-0680-852-4.png?v=2026-05-14%2003%3A34%3A13)

- Book: [Doo-dah!](https://www.bookquiver.com/ken-emerson/doo-dah) ([Doo-dah!.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/ken-emerson/doo-dah.md))
- Authors: [Ken Emerson](https://www.bookquiver.com/ken-emerson)
- Publisher: da_capo_press
- ISBN: 978-03-0680-852-4
- Pages: 1
- Published: 1998-08-22
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

Stephen Foster (1826-1864) was America's first great songwriter and the first to earn his living solely through his music. He composed some 200 songs, including such classics as " Oh! Susanna," Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair," " Old Folks at Home (Way down upon the Swanee River)," and " Camptown Races (Doo-dah! Doo-dah!)." He virtually invented popular music as we recognize it to this day, yet he died at age thirty-seven, a forgotten and nearly penniless alcoholic on the Bowery. The author reveals Foster's contradictory life while disclosing how the dynamics of nineteenth-century industrialization, westward expansion, the Gold Rush, slavery, and the Civil War infused his music, and how that music influenced popular culture.