Interview by Molly Murphy for the NEA
January 10, 2008
Edited by Don Ball
AN EARLY LOVE OF MUSIC
Q: I always start by asking people about some very pivotal, early experiences with music that they might have had.
Frank Foster: Well, at a very early age, I had an ear for music. I
loved music. I can remember loving music from age five. I would hear
classical music on the radio, and I would say, "Wow, that sounds great."
And at six, starting from six to age 12, my mother, who loved
classical music (especially opera), would take me to the local opera. We
had an opera pavilion at the Cincinnati Zoo. And by age 12, I saw all
the major operas. Carmen, Rigoletto, La Traviata, La Bohème.
Q: Did you follow them?
Frank Foster: I didn't know anything about libretto, but I followed
the story. I saw Othello on stage in downtown Cincinnati in the
auditorium, and one thing I remember vividly: the time period was the
1930s and as you may or may not know, America was very Jim Crow at the
time. Racial prejudice was almost fashionable and Othello was played by
the great Paul Robeson. Well, in the scene where Othello slaps
Desdemona, in a theater of 1,500 people, at the moment that he slapped
Desdemona, 1,500 white voices gasped in horror in unison, and I sat
there and said, "Ha." I was about 12 [years old] at the time, between 10
and 12.
INTRODUCTION TO JAZZ
Q: When did you first start hearing jazz?
Frank Foster: Not until I was about 12. I heard my first jazz, and I
had a brother who was six years my senior and he loved jazz. He loved
the big bands. Now, big bands were fashionable then, were in vogue at
the time, and he started me listening to Duke Ellington, Jimmie
Lunceford, and Count Basie. He said, "This is what's happening."
I had started taking clarinet lessons at age 11. I just wanted to
play music and how that happened was a friend of mine, my best childhood
buddy, we were looking at a newspaper and we saw an ad in the paper
from Wurlitzer for music lessons for three dollars a week, three dollars
a lesson, and there was a picture of a clarinet, and he said, "Whoo, I
think I'll take up clarinet," and I said, "I think I'll take up clarinet
too." I wasn't going to be outdone. I followed through on my threat,
but he didn't.
Q: Where'd you get the clarinet?
Frank Foster: From Wurlitzer in Cincinnati. You paid for lessons
while you paid on the instrument. Three dollars a lesson: $1.50 went for
the lesson and $1.50 went toward the payment on the instrument. And at
age 13, my teacher told me [that] in the dance band the clarinet is not
the main instrument, it's the saxophone, and he suggested I take up
saxophone. So I took up saxophone at age 13.
Q: I have read that even in high school you were leading
bands and you were doing some composing. How did you figure out how to
do all that?
Frank Foster: In my senior year I organized my own 12-piece band.
Q: Was this completely extracurricular?
Frank Foster: I had nothing to do with music in school. I wasn't in the school band, orchestra, nothing.
Q: Really? And they wouldn't have had a jazz band anyway, right?
Frank Foster: Not at the time they didn't, no. I played in bands,
local bands as a sideman, starting at age 13 and 14, and I played with a
band called Jack Jackson and his Jumping Jacks. They bought what we
called "store-bought" arrangements, stock arrangements, and I would
listen to these and I would hear what everybody was playing, and I would
say, "Well, I can do that." So, I just took up writing. I didn't have
any formal lessons in arranging, I just started writing. And my senior
year of high school I organized my own band. I had four trumpets, five
saxophones, piano, bass, drums, and guitar; no trombones because there
were no trombone players in Cincinnati except one girl and she played
with somebody else, so I couldn't get her.
I played a few gigs. I played my girlfriend's high school prom. She
had to dance with everybody else because I couldn't dance -- I was the
leader of the band.
LAYING THE FOUNDATION
Q: After high school you went to Wilberforce University, right?
Frank Foster: I graduated from high school and then I was in the
college band for three years. My mother wanted me to be a classical
musician and I thought it was a pretty good idea. She wanted to send me
to the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music at that time. This was 1946. I
graduated from high school that year and the Cincinnati Conservatory did
not admit persons of color and so she said, "Well, in that case you
might as well go to my alma mater," which was Wilberforce University
located in central Ohio near Dayton, so I went there. It's interesting
to note that since the classical music field, which did not welcome
persons of color at that time, was closed to me, my only other option
was to go into jazz.
At Wilberforce, I played in the dance band for three years, and
during that time I laid the foundation for later joining the Count Basie
Orchestra.
Q: How were you laying the foundation there?
Frank Foster: I got drunk one time and got sick and we had a job in
Indianapolis. On the way to Indianapolis, I had a horrible hangover and
we were riding in one of those old buses where you can open the window,
and I had to keep my head out the window. The fresh air brought me
around. By the time we got to Indianapolis I was cool and we played the
job. Jazz of the Philharmonic was in this town the same night, and Billy
Eckstine and Sarah Vaughan were the stars, and after their concert was
over they wanted some place to go to hang out. Where did they choose to
go but where we were playing the dance? They showed up at our dance. It
was Billy Eckstine, Sarah Vaughan, Dexter Gordon, Red Rodney, and Stan
Levy, I think. They came and they asked could they sit in with us and we
said, "Are you kidding? Sit in."
Q: Was that an intimidating kind of situation for you or was that just pure excitement?
Frank Foster: No, it was pure pleasure and excitement, and Sarah
Vaughan was singing "Lover Man," and I was backing her up on alto. I
played lead alto with the band. I must have played something that she
found interesting, and she turned around and smiled at me. Now, here's
this 19-year-old being smiled at by the likes of Sarah Vaughan. I almost
levitated into the ceiling.
On the strength of that one night, five years later, Count Basie was
looking for a tenor saxophonist and Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstine
said, "Well, we know a young guy named Frank Foster. If you can find
him, we're sure he would fill the bill."
DETROIT
Q: You then spent a couple of years in Detroit?
Frank Foster: Two years in Detroit, yes.
Q: And there were so many musicians around Detroit at that time, I've heard a lot about, what was it, the Bluebird?
Frank Foster: The Blue Bird Inn. First of all, I didn't graduate from
college. My third year of college my grades were horrible except for
music. Snooky Young had a seven-week gig in Detroit that started in
August and he asked my mother if I could make this gig. She said, "Yes,
but he has to come back and finish his senior year of college." "No
problem, no problem, I'll get him back." I went to Detroit for this
seven-week engagement. About the fifth week of the engagement, all three
of my instruments were stolen. I had a tenor saxophone, an alto
saxophone, and a clarinet. They were stolen from the club we were
playing in.
It ended up in with me staying in Detroit so it was a lucky, terrible
blow because I fell in love with Detroit. I just wanted to stay anyway.
So, I told my parents, I've got to stay here and help the detectives
find my instruments. That was my lame excuse.
Q: You never went back and finished college?
Frank Foster: Never went back. And my mother's sister lived in
Detroit so I had an aunt, a place to stay while I was in Detroit. I
freelanced for two years, and that's where I saw Barry Harris, Kenny
Burrell, Tommy Flannigan, and the Jones [Hank, Thad, and Elvin] were in
the area. I hung out with Elvin. I think they were from Pontiac. They,
incidentally, are [my mother's sister's] first cousins. The Jones
family. I didn't know that then.
I met so many, and I said, "I never knew there were this many
musicians in the world, all these great people up here." I said, "I'm
staying here," and there was one guy who said, "You don't want to stay
here, you want to go to New York, that's where it's happening." I said,
"I don't need to go to New York. This is where it's happening."
JOINING UP WITH BASIE
Q: I wanted to ask you about a certain event. I think you
were stationed in Korea and you came across an issue of Down Beat
magazine?
Frank Foster: In February 1953, I had gone in the Army from Detroit,
and I ran across this Down Beat. I saw a picture of the Count Basie
Orchestra inside and an article on the orchestra and inset photos of
Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Paul Quinichette. I said to myself, "Man I
sure want to get into that band." I got out of the Army in May and went
back to Detroit, and I was walking down the street in my uniform on a
weekend pass, and I ran into an old friend from Cincinnati by chance. He
said, "Hey, man, it's good to see you. Count Basie's looking for you." I
said, "Looking for me? Nobody even knows I'm in town." Basie was
playing that night at a ballroom in Detroit.
I had never met Basie. I had seen the band when I was younger but I
never met him, and this friend, I didn't even know he knew about jazz.
So I went over [to the ballroom] and sure enough, Lockjaw Davis was
going to leave the band soon. I had my mouthpiece in my pocket. I didn't
have a horn so I introduced myself and asked if I could sit in. Ernie
Wilkins and Jimmy Wilkins were in the band at the time and they both
knew me from college. Jimmy Wilkins was our band leader in college, and
he said, "Yeah, let him sit in. This is the guy you've been looking
for."
So I sat in for two songs, and Basie said, "I'll be in touch, kid."
It was May of 1953; three months later he sent me a telegram and a
one-way ticket to New York to join the Basie Orchestra. In February of
that same year, I [had been] sitting in a tent in Korea reading Down
Beat wanting to be in the band.
Q: When you went with Basie, where were you playing?
Frank Foster: Everywhere. My first job with Basie was in a city in
Western New York called Jamestown. A dance, just a simple dance and then
from there we went all across the country and ended up in California
and came back across the country to New York doing one-nighters
traveling by bus. There's a whole lot of camaraderie and a whole lot of
fun, and for a youngster like me who was only 24 it was like being in
west heaven.
Q: I have read that you felt that you sometimes didn't quite fit the band, or your sound didn't quite fit.
Frank Foster: The guys that preceded me, like Lester Young and Buddy
Tate, I had heard them with the band years earlier and they just sounded
like they belonged. Well, I came into the band with a hard bebop style
of playing. Dexter Gordon at the time was my idol, and I just somehow
didn't feel that my style fit the band.
Q: Well, Basie must have because he would have booted you.
Frank Foster: He gave me nothing but encouragement, and I was also
writing and he liked the way I wrote. I came into the band with an
arrangement already written that I had done while I was in the Army. It
was a little mambo, a simple mambo thing, and they played it and he
liked it.
It was a big thrill when you hear your music played back to you by
the band because at the time (this was 1953 B.C., Before Computers), it
was unlike today when you can hear what you're writing on the playback
on the computer. You know what it sounds like approximately. Then I
didn't know what it sounded like. I just wrote it down on paper and
hoped it sounded good, but I was exercising my musical knowledge when
writing. I had a reasonable assurance that it would sound good.
"SHINY STOCKINGS"
Q: Can you remember one particular piece where what the band played didn't sound like what you had imagined in your head?
Frank Foster: We'll start with "Shiny Stockings," my best known
composition. I put that down with care and precision and everything, and
we rehearsed. I remember we arrived in Philadelphia to play at a club
called Peps, and it was a habit of the band on opening day in a
nightclub to have a rehearsal. When we arrived, the rehearsal was
scheduled, but everybody was tired and evil, and nobody wanted to get
out of bed, and we were hungry, and the last thing we felt like doing
was rehearsing. So I put "Shiny Stockings" in front of the guys and they
sloughed through it and it sounded like a 43-car pile up. I said, "Oh
my gosh, he'll never play this."
I thought it was going to sound better than this, but [Basie] must
have heard something even through all that confusion. He played it and
played it. It was his habit not to play things that didn't turn out good
in rehearsal, if an arrangement was too busy or too loaded with all
kinds of "pregnant 19s" as he called them. That's what he called a
loaded arrangement. He said, "Don't put too many pregnant 19s in there,
kid."
I gave Basie a little space to do his thing, and then the band
started off with a soft ensemble and took it from there. Another
interesting thing is the melody of that song: I didn't think it was my
original melody. It was something I thought I had heard Snooky Young
play. I said to him, "Man, ain't this something you played? I heard you
play that." He said, "No, wasn't nothing you heard me play." I said,
"Well, maybe it is mine."
It had an excellent trumpet solo by Thad Jones that was the only
other solo besides Basie's, and it had two shout choruses on the end. It
started off very softly and built up to a very crescendo-ed climax in
the end. That's what [Basie] liked and, as little as I knew about
arranging at the time, I must have hit the bull's-eye that time.
PLAYING WITH ELVIN
Q: After you left the Basie band, you started playing with
Elvin Jones's band. That's a very different sort of band sound and
ensemble. I'm sure it must have been interesting to find your voice or
to take your voice from that one ensemble to the next.
Frank Foster: Well, I didn't go from Basie straight to playing with
Elvin. It was several years in between. Elvin and I had been friends
since way back before I even joined the Army. So he hired me to play
with his quartet. It was only a quartet. Let's see, drums, bass, piano,
and saxophone, and later it was a quintet with two tenor saxophones on
the front line. At one time Joe Farrell and myself and another time
Sonny Fortune and myself, and the quintet/quartet setup was not my
preferred mode of expression. I was a big band junkie from age 13, and
the big band offers so much more potential for extended colorations and
textures. I figured I could only do so much with a quintet, but it was
fun because there was a lot of playing space and a lot of space for
improvisation and creativity, so that sort of compensated for not having
all those pieces surrounding me.
Q: Were you composing for that band?
Frank Foster: Oh, yes. I composed songs for Elvin and we traveled
around on the road, and it was really big fun and it was exciting. Elvin
was one of the most exciting people I ever played with. He just
generated such electricity on the drums. He would play, and he would
look at the audience and have this wide-eyed, almost insane stare in his
eyes, and people would become enthralled by him. They couldn't keep
their eyes off him. He loved to powerhouse behind the soloists, and we
soloists loved it because he pushed us to push ourselves.
TAKING OVER THE BASIE BAND
Q: When you eventually took over the leadership of the Basie
band after Basie died, how did you handle the balance of trying to be
true to Basie's vision versus bringing your own vision to the band?
Frank Foster: Well, first of all, as soon as I took over the
leadership, I decided I'm going to write for this band because I'm a
writer. That's what I do. That's one thing that I do. In keeping with
the tradition, I'm not going to write anything that I think Basie
himself would not have liked. For a time I wrote what I think was within
the Basie context, and then I got bored with that and I wanted to
explore and get more adventurous and I did, and I got a lot of
dissenting voices when I did.
Q: From within the band?
Frank Foster: Some within the band and some from without the band. I
had all kinds of opinions from both sides. People saying, "Love what
you're doing with the band, man, you sure are making 'em swing," and on
the other hand, "That's not Basie, you're getting away from the Basie
style." Naturally, I didn't want to listen to them because I wanted to
expand, and my theory on that was Basie himself liked new stuff. Basie
himself was, in a sense, progressive-minded because he wanted new stuff
to come into the book while he was alive. He accepted a lot of things
that probably a lot of people would've thought, "That ain't Basie," but
he was really very broadminded. He just didn't want it to be too full of
notes and "too busy," as he called it. It always had to swing. That was
the one basic ingredient that always had to be there: to swing.
Q: What percentage of the personnel had remained the same since you had been playing with the Basie band?
Frank Foster: There were only about four or five. Freddie Green (who
had been there forever), Sonny Cohn, Bill Hughes. Those are about the
only holdovers from the old Basie band. When I say the old Basie band, I
meant the band that I was a member of from '53 to '64. So, when I took
over in '86, those were the only ones still left in the band. But the
band still had that same electricity, that same fire.
Q: How did you take over that leadership? How did that come about?
Frank Foster: Thad Jones had taken over not immediately but a short
while after Basie passed, and his health was failing. I think he left
the band for health reasons. They went leaderless for awhile, and they
had Eric Dixon, who sat in the saxophone section, counting off the tunes
and directing the band and then sitting back down in the band and
standing up to cut off the tunes. So, Cee [Foster's wife] and I went to
hear them somewhere. Freddie Green would stand up at the mic, guitar in
hand, and he'd say a few words (we couldn't understand what they were),
and then he'd say, "Well, this is the Basie Orchestra." So I said it
shouldn't go down like that. They should have somebody standing out
front.
I really don't know how it came about. We had a meeting with George
Wein, and George Wein said, "Yes, I can see a Basie band with Frank
Foster standing out front," and next thing I knew I was the leader of
the band. Actually, I went to do one gig with the band before I even
took over around the first of June.
I liked standing in front of the band. I liked the leadership role. I
liked directing the band. I got to feature myself when I wanted to, but I
was very unselfish in that regard. I tried to make sure that everybody
else in the band had [solos], so I was looking out for everybody before
looking out for myself.
Q: Did you use Basie as a model?
Frank Foster: Basie as a pianist had an advantage sitting at the
piano because if he had finished one song and didn't know what he was
going to play next, he would sit at the piano and doodle for about two
or three minutes and he'd play something and it almost sounded like he
was going into a piano concerto while he was thinking of the next song
he was going to play. Then as soon as he thought of the song, he would
go into a typical introduction that let the band members know what the
song was going to be. It was amazing because Basie had an introduction
for every song, almost every song, about 90 percent of the songs the
band played. He had a set introduction that he played and as soon as he
hit the first note we knew what the song was.
COMPOSING
Q: Since your stroke, I understand that you are not able to play anymore, is that right?
Frank Foster: Right.
Q: I'm interested in how you have weathered that process.
Frank Foster: It wasn't as difficult as you might think. You might
think, "Oh, I can't play anymore, oh, it's a horrible world, I want to
die," or something like that, but I had always had as much fun writing
as playing. Writing and playing, they're both strongly creative, right?
But when you play something, if you mess up you can't make it right. But
you can write something, and if it's not right you can change it. And I
always had as much pleasure writing as playing because, as I told you
earlier, the thrill of hearing your music played back to you is almost
indescribable.
Q: When you write now do you use a computer?
Frank Foster: Yes. They have a device on the computer called "human
playback," which when you enable it, almost sounds like a real orchestra
coming out of the computer. It's not 100 percent but it's close enough
that you can almost get it. Sometimes I sit in my office and have
concerts for myself playing everything that I've finished on the
computer. [My wife] must think I'm nuts. I've got about 15 uncompleted
compositions on my computer that I'm going to go back to someday and
finish.
Q: How long does it take to finish a composition?
Frank Foster: It takes from about two days to six months to finish
one piece, depending on the nature of that piece and how much time you
feel like spending on it. I have finished arrangements within two or
three days, single arrangements, and then there's some stuff that I'm
still on that I've been working on for six months. For instance, for the
Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, I'm working on one now that I have to
finish the music within a certain length of time or I'll be delinquent
and be called bad names by people.
One of the biggest thrills of my life came a couple of years ago when
I was commissioned to do some music for the Malaysia Symphony in
conjunction with the Basie Orchestra. The Basie band was going to play
its usual fare, so five of those pieces (including my composition "Shiny
Stockings") were going to be part of what they did together with the
symphony. I wrote arrangements on those same pieces for the symphony to
precede what the Basie band did. [I thought,] "Well, this is going to be
nice. I'll just go there and sit in the audience and enjoy this." I
ended up conducting the Malaysia Symphony because the conductor was out
of the country or something. And they said, "Well, you have to conduct."
I have to conduct the symphony orchestra?! You must be crazy. But there
are pictures of me conducting to prove that I was there, and it was
absolutely exhilarating.
Né le 6 avril 1934 à Houston au Texas, Horace Tapscott est le fils de Mary Lou Malone, pianiste qui dirigeait son propre groupe de jazz. Il grandit donc bercé par le blues, le boogie-woogie et les spirituals entendus à l'église.
En
1948, il intègre la Jefferson High School où il suit les cours du
Docteur Samuel R. Browne et où, au sein de l'orchestre, il côtoie entre
autre Don Cherry, Sonny Criss, Frank Morgan, Eric Dolphy… Il se consacre alors essentiellement à l'étude du trombone et l'année suivante, le pianiste Monroe Tucker
lui offre son premier engagement dans un club sur Central Avenue,
l'équivalent de la 52nd rue à New York, où il se rend régulièrement pour
écouter Art Tatum, Charlie Parker…
De 1953 à 1957, Tapscott intègre l'orchestre
de l'Armée de l'Air et il est envoyé à la Fort Warren Air Force Base de
Cheyenne dans le Wyoming. C'est à cette époque qu'il abandonne le
trombone pour le piano et forme son premier groupe The Nu-Tones avec le
saxophoniste Robbie Robertson, le contrebassiste Herbert Baker et le batteur Billy James.
C'est ainsi qu'en 1961, de retour à Los Angeles, il se consacre dorénavant uniquement au piano, il forme dans le quartier de Watts, le Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, un orchestre dont le but est de préserver et de développer la Black culture dans la communauté. Les premiers membres en sont la pianiste Linda Hill, le tromboniste Lester Robertson, les contrebassistes David Bryant et Alan Hines et les saxophonistes Jimmy Woods et Guido Sinclair. La même année est créée l'U.G.M.A. (Underground Musicians Association), qui deviendra quelques années plus tard l'U.G.M.A.A. (Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension), une organisation s'étendant aux autres domaines artistiques et dont l'Arkestra n'est qu'un élément.
Durant l'été 1965, le quartier de Watts est le théâtre de sinistres émeutes entre la communauté noire et la police. "Le premier jour de l'insurrection, la fusillade
a débuté au Will Rogers Park près de la 103rd rue et Central Avenue.
Nous étions, comme d'habitude, en train de répéter plus bas sur la
103rd. La police a débarqué, a encerclé l'orchestre et nous a ordonné
d'arrêter de jouer car selon eux nous incitions à la révolte. L'instant d'après le quartier était plein d'ambulances et de policiers."
L'année
suivante, sur les conseils de musiciens comme Stanley Crouch et John
Carter, Bob Thiele propose à Tapscott d'enregistrer pour son nouveau
label Flying Dutchman. "Je n'étais pas intéressé par cet
enregistrement, mais j'en ai parlé aux gars du groupe – Arthur Blythe,
David Bryant, Walter Savage, Jr. et Everett Brown, Jr. – et leur ai dit que nous devions voter. Si ils votaient contre moi nous ferions l'enregistrement. Ils ont voté contre moi." Tapscott et son groupe entrent donc en studio pour l'enregistrement de The Giant Is Awakened son premier album
en leader, à une seule condition cependant, qu'il puisse participer en
studio à la finalisation du disque. Cette promesse ne sera pas tenue se
qui le mettra hors de lui.
Depuis sa création jusqu'au milieu des années 70, le Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra
a accueilli un grand nombre de très bons musiciens comme Azar Lawrence,
David Murray, Lawrence "Butch" Morris et son frère Wilber, Sabir
Mateen, Vinny Golia, Alex Cline… constituant ainsi un répertoire riche
de centaine de compositions originales.
En 1978 débute sa collaboration avec Toshiya Taenaka qui produira trois disques du pianiste pour les labels Interplay et Bopland dont un trio In New York avec Art Davis et Roy Haynes. C'est à cette même date qu'il rencontre Tom Albach, "Il
avait l'habitude de venir dans le quartier. Il était là à chaque
concert mais ne m'adressait pas la parole. Il est venu à chaque concert
pendant cinq ou six ans sans rien dire, juste pour écouter. Puis un jour
il a suggéré de nous enregistrer à l'Immanuel United Church of Christ
et de fonder le label Nimbus". Deux enregistrement du Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra sont rapidement gravés – Flight 17 et The Call – ainsi qu'un troisième enregistré donc Live At The I.U.C.C..
En 1989, le label suisse Hat Art enregistre Tapscott accompagné de John Carter,
Cecil McBee et Andrew Cyrille et, en 1993, il se rend à Paris pour
enregistrer aux côtés de la saxophoniste Nelly Pouget. A cette époque il
collabore également avec la scène hip-hop de Los Angeles, les Watts Prophets, Freestyle Fellowship…
Songs of the Unsung - The Musical and Social Journey of Horace Tapscottpar Horace Tapscott et Steven Isoardi
