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" De Camptown Races" or " Gwine to Run All Night" (nowadays popularly known as " Camptown Races") is a Folk music by American Romantic music composer Stephen Foster. It was published in February 1850 by F. D. Benteen and was introduced to the American mainstream by Christy's Minstrels, eventually becoming one of the most popular folk/Americana tunes of the nineteenth century. It is Roud Folk Song Index no. 11768.
Richard Jackson was curator of the Americana Collection at New York Public Library; he writes:
The lyrics talk about a group of transients in a camp town who bet on horses to try to make some money. Being that betting on horses was considered immoral, the "Camptown ladies" may also have been shady. Despite the minstrel shows being widely considered racist, this and other songs written during that period have managed to remain standards in the American national repertory.
"Camptown Races" was originally written in imperfect African American Vernacular English. The lyrics portray the dialect of a stereotypical African American; for example, "de" and "gwine" recur.
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Richard Crawford observes in America's Musical Life that the song resembles Dan Emmett's "Old Dan Tucker", and he suggests that Foster used Emmett's piece as a model. Both songs feature contrast between a high instrumental register with a low vocal one, comic exaggeration, hyperbole, verse and refrain, call and response, and syncopation. However, Foster's melody is "jaunty and tuneful" while Emmett's is "driven and aggressive". Crawford points out that the differences in the two songs represent two different musical styles, as well as a shift in minstrelsy from the rough spirit and "muscular, unlyrical music" of the 1840s, to a more genteel spirit and lyricism with an expanding repertoire that included sad songs, sentimental and love songs, and parodies of opera. Crawford explains that, by mid-century, the "noisy, impromptu entertainments" characteristic of Dan Emmett and the Virginia Minstrels were passé and the minstrel stage was changing to a "restrained and balanced kind of spectacle".Richard Crawford. 2001. America's Musical Life: a history. W. W. Norton. pp. 210–211.
The song was the impetus for renaming Camptown, a village of Clinton Township, Essex County, New Jersey. When the new ballad was published in 1850, some residents of the village were mortified to be associated with the bawdiness in song. The wife of the local postmaster suggested Irvington, to commemorate writer Washington Irving, which was adopted in 1852.
F. D. Benteen later released a different version with guitar accompaniment in 1852 under the title " The Celebrated Ethiopian Song/Camptown Races". Louis Moreau Gottschalk quotes the melody in his virtuoso piano work "Grotesque Fantasie, the Banjo", op. 15, published in 1855.New York: William Hall & son, c1855 In 1909, composer Charles Ives incorporated the tune and other vernacular American melodies into his orchestral Symphony No. 2. "Charles Ives's America". Georgetown University.J. Peter Burkholder. " 'Quotation' and Paraphrase in Ives' Second Symphony". . 19th-Century Music, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 3–25. . Accessed 26 July 2013. Portions of the song's melody were quoted in Aaron Copland's 1942 Lincoln Portrait.
The song was revived on a number of occasions in the twentieth century with recordings by Bing Crosby (recorded December 9, 1940), Johnny Mercer (1945), Al Jolson (recorded July 17, 1950), Julie London (included in her album Swing Me an Old Song, 1959), and Frankie Laine (included in his album Deuces Wild, 1961). Country music singer Kenny Rogers recorded the song in 1970 with his group, The First Edition, on their album Tell It All Brother under the title of "Camptown Ladies". The Football chant "Two World Wars and One World Cup" is set the tune of "Camptown Races", chanted as part of the England–Germany football rivalry.
The chorus of "Camptown Races" was also featured heavily in 1998 by the band Squirrel Nut Zippers track and music video entitled "The Ghost of Stephen Foster".
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