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Piano sheet music for kids · Folk song · Level 4: Up to the C above
Camptown Races
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 4/4, 16 bars and a pickup. Press Play to hear it on a real piano, slow it down, or hear one hand at a time; click any note to start from there; print it for the music stand.
About this arrangement
Foster’s racing song from 1850, with its famous “doo-dah” answer. The right hand starts on G with the little finger and sits in C position for the whole verse; “doo-dah” is E then a long D, so count the dotted minim out. The chorus (bars 9 to 12) stretches up to the C above middle C on “night”, and the last line has quick quaver pairs on “mo-ney on the”, “-bo-dy” and “on the”. The left hand uses C, F and G7, with the F chord under “goin’ to run all day”.
Practice tip: Practise bar 10 to 12 on their own: the jump up to high C needs the little finger ready before you get there. Keep “doo-dah” lazy and the quavers crisp.
The words
The Camptown ladies sing this song, doodah, doodah, the Camptown racetrack five miles long, oh, doodah day! Goin' to run all night, goin' to run all day, I'll bet my money on the bobtail nag, somebody bet on the bay.
A short history
Stephen Foster published “Gwine to Run All Night, or De Camptown Races” in Baltimore in 1850, two years after “Oh! Susanna”. It was written for the blackface minstrel shows of the day, in the dialect those shows used, and the words we sing now are a cleaned-up version of Foster’s.
Camptown was a real place: a small settlement in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, Foster’s home state, and the “five-mile racetrack” is said to have been the road where the locals raced their horses.
The tune became one of the best-known American melodies of the century. It turns up in Charles Ives’s Second Symphony (1901), in Warner Bros. cartoons, and in school songbooks all over the world, and the “doo-dah” response is still the thing everyone remembers.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Stephen Foster, 1850
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 4/4
- Length
- 16 bars and a pickup
- Tempo
- Lively, crotchet = 116
- Difficulty
- Level 4: Up to the C above (piece 114 of 201)
- Type
- Folk song
- Hands
- Both: melody in the right hand, chords in the left
- Copyright
- Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal and classroom use
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