4 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Al Foster, Master of the Jazz Drums, Is Dead at 82
Al Foster, a drummer who worked with some of the most illustrious names in jazz across a career spanning more than six decades, leaving his distinctive stamp on important recordings by Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson and many others, died on Wednesday at his apartment in Manhattan. He was 82.
His daughter Kierra Foster-Ba announced the death on social media but did not specify a cause.
Mr. Foster came up emulating great bebop percussionists like Max Roach, but his most high-profile early gig came with Mr. Davis, who hired him in 1972, when he was refining an aggressive, funk-informed sound. Mr. Foster's springy backbeats firmly anchored the band's sprawling psychedelic jams.
In 'Miles: The Autobiography,' written with Quincy Troupe and published in 1989, Mr. Davis praised Mr. Foster's ability to 'keep the groove going forever.'
Mr. Foster also excelled in a more conventional jazz mode, lending an alert, conversational swing to bands led by the saxophonists Mr. Henderson and Mr. Rollins and the pianists Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner and Tommy Flanagan.
'What he was doing was reminiscent of some of the great drummers of our period,' Mr. Rollins said of Mr. Foster in a phone interview, citing foundational figures like Art Blakey and Max Roach. 'He always had that feeling about him, those great feelings of those people. And that's why I could never be disappointed playing with Al Foster. He was always playing something which I related to.'
Mr. Foster often framed his long career as a fulfillment of his early ambitions.
'I've been so blessed because I've played with everybody I fell in love with when I was a young teenager,' he told the website of Jazz Forum, a club in Tarrytown, N.Y.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
