Hard Times

HomeDocumentaryHard Times
Get in control of your TV
Choose from over 500 channels from Sky, Virgin and Freeview and customise just the way you like it.
Click here to download and customise now
Sick of squinting at your ragged paper TV guide?
Over 570 channels with FULL information in one powerful package.
Click here to download and try now

Running Time: 30 minutes (approx)

1: Michael Feinstein pays tribute to the first great American songwriter. Stephen Foster was the first songwriter to earn his living solely through his music rather than subsisting, as other songwriters did at the time, by teaching or performing. It was the whirlwind success of Oh Susanna, written when Foster was 21, which led him to his chosen career. The song spread like wildfire from his native Pittsburgh to New York, then to California where it became the anthem for the Gold Prospectors. Probably no single song had ever been so popular before but, despite that, Foster never saw a cent. As well as Oh Susanna, Foster was also the author of Camptown Races and others. Biographer Ken Emerson talks about the key aspects of Foster's personal life and Deane L Root, musicologist and director of the Center for American Music, explains the musical context of the time and why what Foster was attempting to do was so groundbreaking.

Main Cast

Patrick Allen

Still looking for more?

 Click here to search the web for Hard Times

Add a comment

(required)
(required but not displayed)
Your e-mail is also used for adding an Avatar image to your comment using the free and very cool Gravatar.com
 
(your personal web site)

Please note we can not guarantee that programme makers will read your comment as we have no direct relationship with them, so requests for application forms will almost certainly be ignored (try searching Google instead). This is merely an opportunity to register opinions, questions or comments about a programme's content.