By now anyone who would read this site has heard that Al Foster passed away.
Here are some notices: Ethan Iverson | Downbeat | NPR | WBGO – Foster @ The Village Vanguard in 2012
I don’t have a lot of records with him, but he made a major impression on what I do have. I think about him all the time, I hear him a lot in my own playing— for his deep groove, use of the bass drum— he makes me think of Mickey Roker in both respects— and his concept for comping, the way he handles form. He picks his spots. He’s not necessarily loud, but there’s a lot of weight behind his sound.
Joe Henderson / State Of The Tenor has long been one of my favorites ever of anything— right at the top of Iverson’s piece he says I’d even argue that the Joe Henderson with Al Foster trios in the ’80s offered the greatest “straight-ahead” jazz since the music’s heyday in the ’60s, with which I agree.
The drummer Dick Berk mentioned to me about Foster telling him something like “I think I’ve finally got my own concept”, and he does here, there’s some strangely layered things happening I never have figured out:
Eddie Gomez / Power Play seems to be pretty forgotten, but I listened to this track a lot in school. Foster just plays this and a ballad on this record. Shortly after this my friend Kirk Ross took me to visit Mad Hatter studios while John Patitucci was recording his second solo album, and was disappointed that I missed them recording a tune with Foster— that day they were working with Dave Weckl.
There’s always a little mystery about what’s going on internally in his playing— as you can hear on the Joe Henderson record, there’s some complexity that’s hard to decipher. It doesn’t matter, you chase the vibe, the cymbal beat, the melodic comping moves using the whole set.
RIP Al Foster
Other recommended albums:
Miles Davis – Man With The Horn, We Want Miles, all the others
McCoy Tyner – Quartets 4×4
Joe Henderson – An Evening With Joe Henderson, The Standard Joe
Blue Mitchell – The Thing To Do
Charlie Haden – The Montreal Tapes: Tribute To Joe Henderson
Any other albums he’s on.