Camptown Races is a comic song in broad,
stereotyped negro "dialect" about betting on a horse race. Here are the
very familiar opening lines:
De Camptown ladies sing dis song -- Doo-dah! doo-dah!
De Camptown racetrack five miles long -- Oh! doo-dah day!
The song was published in 1850 in Stephen
Foster's Plantation Melodies as sung by the Christy & Campbell
Minstrels and New Orleans Serenaders. The Camptown of Foster's own
experience was in Pennsylvania, but a "camptown", or tent city was a
temporary workingmen's accommodation familiar in many parts of the
United States, especially along the rapidly expanding railroad network.
The rag-tag mix of horses that are racing, and the disorder of the
racing conditions at the ramshackle camptown track provide the fun,
with the usual unspoken undercurrent of superiority among the
entertained hearers.
With our Camptown Races sheet music get the traditional feel of the song and can imagine the horses competing with each other.
Help with transposing
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