Stephen Foster Covers

Stephen Foster—this country's first first great pop song writer—died over 150 years ago, but his songs still get covered almost more than anyone else. Here are two recent examples: 

• Sammy Miller and The Congregation performing "Gentle Lena Clare" 



• Emmylou Harris and Joan Baez performing  "Hard Times Come Again No More"

Hard Times Come Again No More

From the album 1865, Anonymous 4 and Bruce Molsk performing the Stephen Foster song "Hard Times Come Again No More".

Slumber My Darling

Alison Krauss with Yo-Yo Ma and Mark O'Connor performing the Stephen Foster song "Slumber My Darling".

Lennon and Maisy

Lennon and Maisy Stella are on the show Nashville, which I have never seen. These girls have amazing harmony. Here they are performing the Stephen Foster song "Hard Times Come Again No More" at the Grand Ole Opry.

Appalachian Christmas

A couple videos of songs from Mark O'Connors new release, Appalachian Christmas. At least part of these songs have been released on previous albums, but this is a collection of songs with vaguely Christmas themes.

Alison Krauss & Yo Yo Ma- "Slumber My Darling", as Stepenen Foster song.



James Taylor - "Ol' Blue"



Steve Wariner - "Now it Belongs to You"

Stephen Foster

Following up on yesterday's post of Harmony Lane, the film about Stephen Foster, here is a straight up post about him. I have a previous post with several versions of what is probably his most performed song today, "Hard Times".

Here are a couple more interpretations of songs he wrote 150 years ago.

"Oh, Susanna" - Ruthie Foster



"Gentle Annie" - UCLA University Chorus



"Beautiful Dreamer" - Raul Malo, just audio.

Harmony Lane

Harmony Lane. The complete 1935 film about the original American songwriter, Stephen Foster.

Hard Times Come Again No More

Not many songs have 100 years of recorded history. The song "Hard Times Come Again No More" does though. This song was written by Stephen Foster in 1854. For obvious reasons it was popular during the Civil War.

Foster wrote many other songs that are still remembered, including "Old Susanna", "My Old Kentucky Home" and "Camptown Races". But "Hard Times Come Again No More" is probably that one that is recorded the most today.

This song was first recorded in 1905 by the Edison Male Quartet. You can hear that recording here.

Mavis Staples recorded this song for a recent album of Foster songs called Beautiful Dreamer - The Songs of Stephen Foster. Here is a video that was made of that recording.





James Taylor, Yo-Yo Ma, Mark O'Connor and Edgar Meyer record the song for the album Appalachian Journey.





Here is an Irish version done by Dé Danann, with vocals by Mary Black and Dolores Keane.





And for good measure here is Bob Dylan covering the song.