The Street Singers

At what point does a songwriter’s work become public property?

Stephen Foster found out that people very quickly got their own ideas about how one of his songs should sound.

In November 1858 Foster, his wife, his daughter and his niece left Pittsburgh on the steamboat Ida May, hound for Cincinnati, where Foster was looking forward to some “recreation and variety” as he put it in a letter to his brother Morrison.

On a chilly evening Foster and his friend Billy Hamilton were walking back to the steamboat after a visit to the editor of the Commercial Gazette. From a distance they heard a party of young men singing a “strangely familiar melody” that turned out to be a badly bungled rendition of Foster’s song “Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming.” As they approached the ensemble, Foster and Hamilton couldn’t resist joining in the singing. The serenaders got through the song and then told off the songwriter and his friend in no uncertain terms, demanding to know what right they had to interfere.

Hamilton asked if they knew the song’s composer. The young men replied, “Stephen C. Foster,” adding that they did not know him personally. Hamilton tried to introduce them to Foster. The singers accused the two of being imposters.

“The situation began to grow alarming,” Hamilton said later, “and we were in danger of having a lively set-to.” Just in time it occurred to him to ask the agitated young men if they knew the editor of the Commercial Gazette. They said they did. Hamilton convinced them to visit the newspaperman’s office. When the editor vouched for the identities of Foster and Hamilton, “suddenly nothing was too good for us,” Hamilton recalled, “and we spent the balance of the evening in their company serenading.”

And on that chilly November night they may even have sung Foster’s songs the way he intended them.