“What Al did was to take what all of the drummers who preceded him had done and put a different spin on it….he was a subtle innovator.” Legendary drummer and NEA Jazz Master Al Foster passed away at the age of 82 last week following a serious illness. To mark his passing and celebrate his remarkable career, Charlie Rees talked to American drummer Jeff Williams about Foster, his longtime friend and contemporary.
UKJazz News: Can you remember the first time you encountered Al Foster?
Jeff Williams: I first saw him on TV playing with Miles Davis. I don’t know how I had not seen Al playing at a club in New York in a jazz context by this point, but it must have been around 1972 because I was still living at Marc Copeland’s loft with John Abercrombie. I knew that Miles had hired him, and I was curious because I had seen Jack DeJohnette with Miles – that was incredible – and then Ndugu (Leon Chancler) on the European tour. I didn’t know anything about Al’s background, but he was playing giant cymbals and hitting them as hard as he could, and playing rock beats. I recall not being entirely sure about that band, so I didn’t think much of it at the time.
When I eventually met him, Lookout Farm (Dave Liebman, Richie Beirach, Frank Tusa & Jeff Williams) was playing at the Vanguard. Of course, Dave was also in Miles’s band with Al, though he had left by then, but they were friends, and so Al came down to see us play. It was our first meeting, and he was very nice. I was playing a cymbal that Paiste had made. I was one of their artists at this time, so they had given me a prototype of a cymbal they were developing called a “Dark Ride”. It was a great cymbal – one of only three that they made, I think. I remember Al asked me about it. I don’t know if he was with Paiste then or not, but he got one. They had started a new series called “Sound Creation” by then, so his was a little different, but he played that for the rest of his life. He was a Zildjian artist, and he was supposed to play their cymbals, but he would sneak the Paiste in if he thought no one was looking.
UKJN: Wow, so he got that cymbal after seeing you play it?
JW: Yeah. That’s how he became aware of it, and he liked it. That was our first connection. Then I started watching him at gigs, and I fell in love with the way he played. We talked a bit and, eventually, started hanging out. He had the chance to hear me play a few times, and always treated me as an equal.
UKJN: Of the gigs you saw him play, which stood out the most to you?
JW: The really great period, and a lot of people talk about it, was when he was playing trio with Joe Henderson and various bass players. I used to go to the Vanguard and see that in the 1980s.
UKJN: Around when The State of the Tenor was recorded?
JW: Right! I was there during that week. But as much as I love Ron Carter, I really loved it best with Charlie Haden. I used to sit by the drums, so close I was almost on stage, maybe a foot away from Al’s hi-hat. I often tell people that it was the equivalent of seeing Charlie Parker for me. Sometimes I say that was the last real jazz I ever heard on the highest possible level. The way Al was able to interact with Joe while keeping a rhythmic flow that was all his own. He was so smooth, so swinging, even understated with his dynamics and subtlety and all these little things he invented.
UKJN: Did that influence your playing?
JW: It had a huge influence on me. I wouldn’t say that I took anything he played or stuff like that, but yeah, it’s definitely a part of my playing.
UKJN: Did he ever give you any tips?
JW: No, we never really talked about anything like that. We always just told each other stories. There are a couple of high-quality videos of me playing with my UK band on YouTube, which I showed him. He said, “Man, you look so relaxed.” That made me very happy.
He went through a rough period during the time he was playing with Joe and Herbie Hancock. He came out of it, but it concerned me at the time.
UKJN: A drug problem?
JW: Yeah. It injured his reputation with some musicians, but he was so great that it didn’t prevent people from hiring him. They wanted what he had, which was fortunate. Later in his life, he and his wife Bonnie went through a terrible ordeal when their son was killed. Al really went through a lot, but he managed to keep himself together to the extent that he was able to play. He was always searching for new ideas and for new ways to approach the instrument. And he was always enthusiastic about the moment he was playing in – what he was doing, who he was playing with, what he was going to do next and what he was looking forward to.
UKJN: Do you have some favourite recordings he made?
JW: Something I’ve noticed is that his recordings don’t do full justice to what he sounded like live. I don’t know why that is, but it’s also been my experience when I’ve recorded. I like An Evening with Joe Henderson (Joe Henderson, Charlie Haden & Al Foster) on Red Records because it’s the closest you can get to being at those concerts. I also think his last record, Reflections – which I was at the CD release for – sounds really good, and I like the way he plays on the Buster Williams record Something More. Of course, he sounds great on those Blue Mitchell records – his first recordings. For some reason, probably Rudy Van Gelder, those are better recordings of the drums than what followed, though State of the Tenor is fairly nice, recording-wise. But there was something about Al’s live sound that I’ve never fully heard replicated on record.
UKJN: You’ve touched on it a bit already, but do you have more thoughts about his playing with Miles Davis? He rarely got to swing in that band…
JW: When Miles came out of retirement in 1981, I was there at KIX in Boston. They had an arrangement of “My Man’s Gone Now”, which they would swing on – I’m sure Al talked him into doing that. That band was really cool in the sense that it really felt like a jazz group. It was different from the pre-retirement band, which was more straight-up-and-down rock with very little subtlety. The band before was so loud that Al was forced to play as loud as he could to be heard. He was like a little kid in the way he idolised Miles. I think during that period, he felt that was what Miles wanted him to do, so that’s how he played. They became very close, probably even more so during Miles’s retirement. Al was calling Miles every day and was really there for him. So, when Miles came out of retirement and put that band together – well, really, Bill Evans (saxophonist) put that band together – I think Miles was happier to let Al play how he wanted. But then they had a falling out because Miles wasn’t happy with the way Al was playing funk. He wanted him to play a straight beat, but Al was improvising with it, and Miles didn’t like that. So, that’s where that ended, although Miles recorded with him on Amandla after.
UKJN: When did you last see him?
JW: I always tried to be with him on his birthdays at Smoke (Jazz Club) if I could, though sadly I was not able to go earlier this year. Luckily, I was able to see him with an interesting band after – I remember Joe Lovano was playing – but Al refused to take a solo in the set I heard. He seemed bugged by something, and he looked pretty frail. It was still happening, man. It just wasn’t to the level of amazement that I was used to with him. I had heard something about him having a serious illness, and he probably had a number of things going on. I was waiting around afterwards, assuming I’d catch him before he left. He was talking to a lot of people, and he waved to me, but he seemed like he wanted to get out, and then he was gone before I could talk to him. That was the last time I saw him. He lived a full life, but he was only seven years older than me, so I’m beginning to think about these things…
UKJN: In your opinion, what is Al Foster’s legacy in the history of jazz drums?
JW: Billy Hart is great – almost in another category, to me – and more modern than Al, in a way. But, to me, Al was the last of a lineage of real bebop swing that comes from Kenny Clarke. He grew up with it, soaked it all up, figured it out and put his own stamp on it. Al was always concerned with being original and wondering if he had his own innovative aspect to his playing.
UKJN: That worried him?
JW: Yes, I think it did. He was so humble about it; a lifelong student, in a way. He was comparing himself to Max Roach, Elvin Jones, Philly Joe Jones, Art Blakey, but he identified more with Art Taylor, who was a tremendous drummer, but who no one talks about as an innovator. Al had little things that only he did, but I don’t think he thought that was enough. He was chasing after something which, in his mind, had to be a major innovation for him to be considered on that level. These were stone-cold facts in his mind.
UKJN: But not in your mind?
JW: No! Was he an innovator like Tony Williams? No. But what was innovative about Al, more than anything, was his feel, his sound and his ears. What he could hear in the moment and how he responded to it. His solos were melodic with great logic and humour. To me, there was something about Al, maybe an eccentric quality, an unusual outlook, that reminded me of Thelonious Monk, whom I’d been around a little bit. These people are originals. To me, Al was like that. There was no bravado; it was just the way he was, and it made him an innovative person regardless of whether he brought something that revolutionised the drums, though he kind of did.
I think what Al did was take what all of the drummers who preceded him had done and put a different spin on it. He freed up certain aspects of the approach, and in doing so, he moved the prospect of bebop drumming forward to include other aspects. Before Al, it had become a matter of right and wrong, and if a drummer tried something different in a straight-ahead situation, the other musicians might say: “You can’t do that! Show me a recording from 1940 to 1960 where somebody did that. That’s not correct!” So, how do you move things forward? By injecting some new information. It’s a much more subtle form of innovation, but that was what I liked about Al. He was a subtle innovator.
