Stephen Foster · Key of C · Public domain
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This chart is written in C. Tap any key above the chart to see the whole song in that key, with every chord already worked out. To stay in C with different chord shapes, play it capo 3 with the A shapes, or capo 5 with the G shapes. Singing with a group? Pick the key where the highest note is comfortable for everyone, then print that page.
Stephen Foster wrote Oh! Susanna in Cincinnati, where he was working for his brother. A local quintet first sang it at Andrews' Eagle Ice Cream Saloon in Pittsburgh on September 11, 1847, and W. C. Peters published it in Cincinnati in 1848. Minstrel troupes picked it up at once and, as was common then, several publishers registered it as their own: it was copyrighted at least twenty-one times between February 1848 and February 1851. Foster was paid about $100 for it.
It was the biggest hit America had yet produced. No American song had sold 5,000 copies of sheet music before; Oh! Susanna sold more than 100,000, and its success persuaded Foster to become the country's first full-time professional songwriter. The beat comes from the polka, a dance craze that had just arrived from Europe, and the opening phrases of the tune use only five notes, which is part of why it is so easy to pick up. The Forty-Niners carried it to California with new words about a washpan on the knee. Foster's second verse, which uses a racial slur, is left out here, as it usually is today. Words and melody are in the public domain.
Three chords: C, G and F, in a brisk 2/4 (Foster marked it Allegretto, and it was printed in G, so try that key if your singers are high voices). Every verse line is four bars starting on a pickup word, with C for most of the line, G landing on the last word ("knee," "dry") or on "for to" and "don't you," and C on the final word. The chorus is the one place F appears: hold it for the whole of "Oh! Susanna," drop to C on "don't," G on "me," and finish exactly like a verse line. A boom-chick strum (bass note, then a light down-up) keeps the polka bounce. For a group, have everyone shout the "Oh!" that opens the chorus together, it is the cue that pulls the room in.
Tap any chord for its diagram, other voicings, and the notes inside it.
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Further reading: Oh! Susanna (Wikipedia)
