On today's episode, Jennie talks with Emily Bingham, author of My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song. "My Old Kentucky Home" is one of Foster's travel songs. His music traveled further from home than the songwriter ever did, and the song has reverberated, becoming an essential part of institutions like the Kentucky Derby. Emily is a native of Louisville and a visiting professor at Bellarmine University. We discuss Emily's research on the Foster Hall Quartet, G.M. Robinson, E.W. Hammond, W.W. Wolfek, and C.E. Hicks. And of course, we amble in the Ohio River Valley, the conurbated region of Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio that both Emily and Stephen Foster called home.

The Foster Hall Collection holds a recording of the Quartet performing Foster’s “My Brudder Gum,” shared here in full with permission from the Center for American Music at The University of Pittsburgh.

To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com.

On today's episode, Jason talks with Joanna Smolko about a Foster song entitled “Hard Times Come Again No More” that has enjoyed a unique afterlife. Joanna is an Instructor of Music at the University of Georgia and her areas of research include popular music, musical borrowing, American sacred music traditions like shape-note hymn singing, American folk music, and the intersections between American history and music. In our conversation we touch on Joanna’s previous research into the use of Foster’s music in twentieth century popular media as well as her current work that explores how covers of Foster’s songs by contemporary artists like Bruce Springsteen continue to shape our collective memory of him.

To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com.

On today's episode, Jason talks with Cody Ebright-Jones about The Stephen Foster Story, a musical performed outdoors during the summer months in Bardstown, Kentucky. Cody is an independent scholar with a recent PhD in Musicology from the University of Michigan and studies the intersections of music, race, and history in the United States. As we discuss, The Stephen Foster Story is a complex, evolving mosaic that reflects contemporary attitudes about race in popular culture as much as it does the history of early American popular music.

To learn more about the show and the book, visit our website at: www.StephenFosterAt200.com.