Beautiful Dreamer
Stephen Collins Foster is sometimes called America's first great songwriter, but you could make the case that he was also the country's first real pop star. Writing songs such as "Camptown Races" and "Oh! Susanna," Foster, a college dropout, was self-destructive, couldn't keep a marriage together, and ended tragically. Living on the Bowery, he gashed his throat in a fatal fall in 1864 at age 37, dying with only 38 cents in his pocket. The idea of a Foster tribute record may seem staid and archaic, particularly as his lesser known tunes are parlor and stylized minstrel songs. But minstrelsy was a lot like rock & roll, and the Pittsburgh native left behind an impressive body of work that draws upon the diverse branches of music brought to America by settlers and slaves from Europe and Africa.Beautiful Dreamer, on which 22 artists celebrate 18 of his compositions, surprises with its breadth of subject matter, tempo, and interpretation, including the use of the glass armonica and santour.  Most of all, the album is uncommonly soulful--Mavis Staples's dignified but heartbreaking performance of "Hard Times Come Again No More,"David Ball's elegiac "Old Folks at Home (Swanee River)," and the feathery rendition of "Slumber, My Darling" byAlison Krauss,Yo-Yo Ma,Edgar Meyer, andMark O'Connorresonate in both the heart and the head. If Foster, the pop star, were alive today, he'd likely sit at the piano in shades and gelled-up hair. But he'd be playing these same songs, timeless and achingly poignant.--Alanna Nash