Swanee River - Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

Way down upon de Swanee Ribber

Far, far away

Dere’s wha my heart is turning ebber

Dere’s wha de old folks stay

All up and down de whole creation

Sadly I roam

Still longing for de old plantation

And for de old folks at home

All de world am sad and dreary

Eb-rywhere I roam;

Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary

Far from de old folks at home!

2nd verse

All round de little farm I wandered

When I was young

Den many happy days I squandered

Many de songs I sung

When I was playing wid my brudder

Happy was I;

Oh, take me to my kind old mudder!

Dere let me live and die

3rd Verse

One little hut among de bushes

One dat I love

Still sadly to my memory rushes

No matter where I rove

When will I see de bees a-humming

All round de comb?

When will I hear de banjo strumming

Down in my good old home?

A little extra history of thay made the song

Stephen C. Foster, one of America’s Best-loved musical storytellers, wrote «The Swanee River (Old Folks at Home)» in 1851. A memorial center at White

Springs honors Foster, who authored about 200 songs during his prolific career

The Suwannee River flows southerly from the Okeefenokee Swamp in Georgia to the

Gulf of Mexico in Florida, topographically slicing the Florida panhandle from

the rest of the state

After Foster wrote «The Swanee River» in 1851, he sold it to famed minstrelman

E. P. Christy.

Foster is reported to have chosen the «Swanee» because its

two-syllable cadence fit nicely into the music he had composed.

It could not

have been due to a familiarity with the river’s Florida section,

since Foster never visited the state

Through House Concurrent Resolution No. 22 in 1935, S. P. Robineau of Miami

successfully entered «The Swanee River» as the official state song, replacing «Florida, My Florida,» which had been adopted as the State Song in 1913.

By 1935 Foster’s rightful position as a writer and composer had been

established