Truly 'born on the 4th of July', Stephen Foster began his life in 1826 Pennsylvania. Though having a troubled and tragically brief life spanning only 37 years, Foster nevertheless wrote memorable words and melodies for over 200 songs.
Many of Foster's most well-known songs were created for the blackface minstrel stage performances popular in the mid-1800's prior to the Civil War, such as "The Camptown Races", "The Glendy Burke", and "The Old Folks at Home." In spite of the fact that he only visited the south briefly on his honeymoon in 1852, many of these songs featured Southern themes and settings romanticizing antebellum plantation life. Later in the 1850's and prior to his death in 1864, Foster increasingly embraced the cause of abolition and in his music he began to write songs of a romantic and more sentimental nature, more suited to the public's growing appetite for 'parlor' music, or music performed in the home for entertainment of family and friends. It was his desire to encourage better "taste... among refined people" by creating lyrics that eliminated "the trashy and really offensive words" often found in "songs of that order" (quite a few of which he had earlier written himself !).
In the 1850’s, the United States was experiencing a recession and Stephen’s home town of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, was suffering from record unemployment. Compounding their situation in the summer of 1854, cholera struck killing 400 people in just two weeks. When Firth. Pond & Co. of New York published this song in 1855, "Hard Times" was advertised as “just the song for the times.” Later, this parlor song once again became relevant during the turmoil of the War Between the States.
Written in 1854, "Hard Times Come Again No More" is one of Foster's serious 'sentimental' songs that appealed to the listener's better nature. It's melody, borrowed from a hymn he heard in an African-American church in his childhood, he combined with a four-part chorus in his lyrics, making it more minstrel in style, yet devoid of any references to slave-life or dialect. To this day it remains one of his most enduring compositions and one that we never tired of performing.