Al Foster, the jazz drummer who performed in bands led by Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, amongst others, has died. Foster’s daughter Kierra Foster-Ba shared the information on Instagram and his longtime companion, Bonnie Rose Steinberg, informed NPR that he died “from a critical sickness.” He was 82.
Born in 1943, in Richmond, Virginia, Aloysius Tyrone Foster grew up in Harlem, the second oldest of 5 siblings. His first musical idol was bebop drummer Max Roach, whose 1955 recording of “Cherokee” impressed a 12-year-old Foster to start working towards daily on the drum package his father had beforehand gifted him. The budding musician obtained his first expertise working as a studio musician on Blue Mitchell’s 1964 album The Factor to Do, which additionally featured a younger Chick Corea. Foster’s large break, nonetheless, arrived just a few years later, when Miles Davis noticed him carry out at a jazz membership on New York’s Higher West Aspect and recruited the drummer to hitch his band.
Foster toured with Davis till the latter’s momentary retirement in 1975, and his work will be heard on stay albums corresponding to In Live performance, Agharta, and Darkish Magus. He additionally performed on the Davis a number of studio LPs, corresponding to On the Nook and Huge Enjoyable. The prolonged jazz-funk jam “Mr. Foster,” recorded through the On the Nook periods, was named in his honor. Saxophonist Sonny Rollins had beforehand fired Foster from his band after their first gig collectively in 1968, however would convey him on tour in Europe a decade later, and even claimed that “Harlem Boys,” from his 1979 album, Don’t Ask, was impressed by the 2 musicians’ related upbringings.
All through the late Nineteen Seventies and Eighties, Foster additionally backed up pianists Hancock, McCoy Tyner, and Horace Silver. In 1978, he grew to become one in all 4 members within the Milestones Jazzstars—a label-made supergroup that additionally featured Rollins, Tyner, and bassist Ron Carter—and, in 1985, each he and Carter lent their abilities to saxophone virtuoso Joe Henderson’s The State of the Tenor, Vols. 1 & 2.
Foster continued composing and performing till simply months earlier than his loss of life, holding a longstanding residency on the Higher West Aspect membership Smoke and sharing his final album, Reflections, in 2022. In 1989’s Miles: The Autobiography, co-written with Quincy Troupe, Davis wrote that “Al may set shit up for everyone else to play off after which he may maintain the groove going ceaselessly…for what I needed in a drummer, Al Foster had all of it.”
