Like most boys growing up in the 1960s, Ken Emerson fell in love with rock'n'roll. Upon becoming an adult, the Huntington, W.Va. native wondered about the evolution of music. Emerson later observed teen-aged boys' tendency to emulate black youngsters in chosing music and clothing. Again, he wondered why.

Emerson, former articles editor for The New York Times and ex-opinion editor of Newsday, launched his admittedly "checkered career" as a rock journalist, writing for Rolling Stone and similar music magazines. "I was fascinated by the impulse so important to rock, that of white adolescents pretending they are black," he says.

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"Elvis did it and today Beck does it today when he sings, 'I've got two turntables and a microphone' on his best-selling single, 'Where It's At.' When, why and how did it become cool for teenagers to affect being black, in many aspects of their lifestyles. Today you'll see white suburban kids wearing jeans so large they're falling off their buttocks, with baseball caps turned backwards."

When Emerson started seeking answers for these cultural curiosities, he discovered the trend isn't new. White musicians such as Benny Goodman, whom he calls "a nice Jewish boy from the suburbs of Chicago who fell in love with swing music," and immigrant songwriters such as Irving Berlin and the Gershwin brothers were among enthusiastic for so-called black music.

"I traced it back to the blackfaced minstrelsy of the 1830s and 1840s," Emerson says. "Then I discovered that the last major biography of Stephen Foster had been published in 1934. I knew I had the inviting opportunity to write the next major biography."

That book, "Doo-Dah! Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture" (Simon & Schuster, $30) received rave notices from major media, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times.

The 400-page book traces Foster's brief life. A longtime resident of Pittsburgh, he gained fame after writing some of America's most enduring popular songs. The hits include "Oh, Susanna!," "Camptown Races," "Beautiful Dreamer," and a state's theme song, "My Old Kentucky Home."

Foster achieved fame, although little money, with his songs for minstrel shows, the blackface reviews where white men rubbed on burnt cork, performed outrageous, often racist skits and songs with often degrading caricatures of blacks. Ironically, Foster never lived in the South and he really wasn't a racist.

As a child Foster visited an older half-brother in Youngstown, Ohio. Emerson writes that "Blackface was born and nurtured in the Northeast and the Ohio River Valley." The author quotes an abolitionist who wrote that "prejudice against the Negro attains its rankest luxuriance . . . on the prairies of Ohio."

Foster died a pauper and a drunk in his late 30s. His songs endure 133 years after his death. They set the stage for today's pop music.