Swinging With A Basie-ite
Saxist, Leader and Arranger Frank Foster Shares Life With And After Count Basie
The following article on Frank Foster was originally published in the June 2000 issue of Jazz Connection Magazine.
When tenor saxophonist Frank Foster was 15 years old, he had an ambition to play with the Count Basie band. Little did he realize that ten years later, his dream would come true, and he would eventually go on to lead Basie's band after the Count's death.
"I never thought I would be a sideman in Count Basie's band, but I really wanted to," said Foster last month in a telephone conversation from his home in Chesapeake, VA. "I grew up listening to the Count's music as I did Duke Ellington's and Jimmy Lunceford's."
Foster, a mainstay in the Count Basie orchestra throughout most of the 1950's through the early 1960's, helped to provide an exciting and distinctive sound with the group not only with his saxophone artistry, but with his arranging prowess as well. He also helped to create such memorable Basie standards as "April In Paris" and "Shiny Stockings."
Most music critics talked about the Basie band during this time as a "well-oiled machine," Foster said.
In 1950 Basie was leading an octet. But by mid-1951 he was reforming a big band, and with that band he discovered virtually new music. The earlier ensemble from the 1930s - '40s had been essentially a function of its soloists, and spontaneity was everything. In the fifties, the soloists were a function of the ensemble, and precision and discipline were the basis of it all.
"Many critics said that the soloists in this band weren't as brilliant as the soloists in his '30s and '40s bands," Foster said. "I somewhat disagree with these critics because Basie had some great soloists during this period, guys like Joe Newman and Thad Jones on trumpets; Frank Wess on tenor sax; Marshall Royal on alto sax; Benny Powell and Al Grey on trombones; and Sonny Payne on drums. They may have been a little more derivative than earlier soloists, but that couldn't be helped."
Born on September 23, 1928, in Cincinnati, OH, Foster grew up listening to all kinds of music. His mother appreciated opera and would take the young Foster to all the major operas before he was 10 years old, he said.
"I love classical music," he said.
Foster started listening to jazz at age eight when his 14-year-old brother played records made by the great Black jazz bands of the day -- Basie, Ellington and Lunceford.
Taking up the clarinet at age 11 and then the alto saxophone at 13, Foster was enamored with the playing styles of alto saxophone giants Johnny Hodges, Benny Carter, Willie Smith and Earl Warren, he said.
"I really loved how Basie's lead alto saxist, Earl Warren played," Foster said.
By the tjme he was a senior in high school, Foster was leading his own 12-piece band for which he did all the musical writing.
Around 1945, Foster became "under the influence" of Charlie Parker, he said.
"I was so much under his influence that I thought about switching to the tenor sax," he said.
He took up the tenor sax while attending Wilberforce University (now Central State University) in Ohio, because of the over-abundance of alto saxophonists at the school, Foster said.
Electing not to complete his senior year in college, Foster went to Detroit in 1949 with trumpeter Snooky Young, who was then leading a 10-piece band.
While in Detroit, Foster's clarinet, tenor and alto saxophones were stolen and he ended up staying there for two years. During that period, he was able to rub shoulders with such jazz notables as Milt Jackson, Wardell Gray, Thad Jones and Elvin Jones, he said.
With the Korean War raging in the Far East, Foster entered the Army in 1951 and was assigned to the Army band.
"Being in the Army band kept me involved in playing and writing music," Foster said.
While in Korea in February, 1953, Foster got a hold of a Down Beat Magazine which contained a feature article about Count Basie and his orchestra. The article also included inside photos of Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Paul Quinichette who were the tenor stars of that band.
"I thought to myself, 'I sure would love to be with that band!' " Foster said. "Little did I know that in five months I would be!"
In May, Foster was ready to be discharged from the Army. Returning to Detroit, he received word that Basie was looking for a saxophonist to replace Davis, who was leaving.
Foster auditioned for Basie and in July he joined the band.
"It was somewhat like being in a dream," Foster said.
During the 11 years he spent with Basie (1953-1964), Foster helped to form the "new" Basie sound with firmly built structures that his arrangements provided. He also joined the pantheon of exciting soloists that has always been a Basie trademark.
The Basie band scored a big hit and critical acclaim on their 1955-56 Verve album, April In Paris. The title track from that album (and yes, that is the Count himself telling the band to take it "One more time!" and "One more once!" at the coda) has since become synonymous with Basie just as "One O'Clock Jump," "Jumpin' At The Woodside," "Tickle Toe," "Every Tub," "9:20 Special," and "Taxi War Dance" had 15 to 20 years earlier.
The album's success was due to a large part because of Foster's arrangements. Along with "April In Paris," "Shiny Stockings" was one of the first classics of that new Basie style with its awe-inspiring brass ensemble with every nuance, every shake, executed to perfection.
Other striking Foster contributions to the Basie repertory have been "Down For The Count" and "Blues Backstage."
"For Count Basie to play an arrangement, it had to swing," Foster said. "It had to go down fairly easily. It didn't have to be easy music, but it did have to swing. You had to feel it. If you didn't feel it and if it didn't swing and if it was too busy, he wouldn't play it. He often used this expression with me -- 'Foster, kid, don't put too many Pregnant 19ths in the arrangement.' A Pregnant 19th, by definition, is too many busy notes."
It has been a lesson that Foster has appreciated from Basie and that he has taken with him throughout his musical career.
"It's letting simplicity play the the biggest role in the arrangements that I write for the band," he said. "It's trying not to have too much busy-ness going on."
Although there were many memorable performances played during his time with Basie, Foster did single out as special the Newport Jazz Festival gigs from the '50s that featured guest soloists and Basie alumni Lester Young, Harry "Sweets" Edison and Roy Eldridge; and a command performance for Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain.
"I remember hearing Princess Margaret after the command performance telling Count Basie that he had a wonderful band," Foster said.
Since Foster was one of Basie's primary arrangers, he was in close proximity to his former boss to offer assessments about him as a bandleader, musician and as a person.
"As a leader, Basie was very easy to work for," Foster said. "All you had to do was to show up for work on time looking good, sober and ready to perform."
Most people got the impression that Basie wasn't that great a pianist, but Foster disagrees.
"Basie was an accomplished pianist," he said. "He had more piano techniques than one might imagine. Although he had a simplistic style of playing, he was well-versed in the stride piano style. He knew what he wanted. He had musicians that were above him in knowledge of harmony and composition but he earned all our respect by the way he handled himself and the band.
"We (the members of the band) used to think that if someone who played a little more modern were at the keyboard, things would be better and we'd have a better time. We also noticed that when someone else sat down at the keyboard even though we'd admired their playing, it wasn't the same as having the Ol' Man there. It was good, but it wasn't effective. We had people like Oscar Peterson, Erroll Garner and Nat Piece and none of them had the same impact playing with the orchestra as Basie had! We held Basie in eternal esteem and respect for that!"
As a person, Basie was quiet, laid back and unassuming, Foster said.
"He was more easily approachable than might have been imagined," he said. "So many people were in awe of him that they didn't speak to him."
Amidst the constant traveling, Foster wasn't home enough to be with his first wife and two young children, so he left Basie to rectify that and to musically branch out on his own.
"I thought I needed to stay home more and to stretch out musically to get back into a modern jazz arena," Foster said. "I needed to get out of the 'Basie mold.' The Basie tradition was wonderful. I was a hard be-bopper and I wanted to get back into some more modern approaches to music."
During this period, Foster tried to establish a tradition of his own by becoming involved with recording and leading small groups as well as a 17-piece big band which became known in the early 1970s as "Frank Foster's Loud Minority." The band is active today.
"It's a modern band sound that is totally my concept," Foster said. "It touches on the Basie tradition but doesn't thrive on it. The element of swing is there all the time. It's more of a concert-type group than a dance band."
Although the band has never worked more than a dozen times per year and is not a traveling road band, it is a situation that Foster hopes to change, he said.
When Count Basie died in 1984, the Basie Estate wanted the band to continue.
The band was first under the direction of Eric Dixon. But the Basie Estate didn't care much for the idea of someone in the band directing and then sitting down to play. They wanted a leader who stood out in front. Trumpeter Thad Jones was then chosen because of his experience as co-leader of the contemporary Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Band.
Already stricken with cancer by the time he assumed the new directorship, Jones resigned after the traveling became too much for him.
Next in line for the musical directorship was Foster because he had bandleader experience and for his prolific big band arrangements.
Foster stayed on to direct the Count Basie Orchestra for nine years (1986-1995).
As many of the original bandleaders passed away, their estates made provisions to keep their bands going, being often referred to as "ghost bands."
"When people refer to us as a 'ghost band,' I say, 'I don't see any ghosts up here,' " Foster quipped.
Like anything else, being musical director had it's ups and downs, Foster said.
"The ups were I had excellent musicians and the band was tight," he said. "The down side was the people who didn't want to hear anything new. They just wanted to hear the old stuff. Being a creative artist, I have to continue creating new music. For someone to thwart that was very frustrating."
Under Foster's leadership, band personnel remained constant with very few turnovers.
"Most everyone in the band stayed," Foster said. "We'd have four chairs that would turn over on occasion -- one of the tenor sax chairs, one each from the trombone and trumpet chairs and the guitar chair."
Guitarist Freddie Green was the only original member of Basie's band, having started with the Count back in 1936. After Green's death in 1987, the band had a hard time finding someone who did what he did so well for over 50 years -- play rhythm on an unamplified guitar.
"No one really wanted to do what Freddie did," Foster said. "We went through a lot of guitarists."
After almost a decade at the helm of the Basie band, Foster resigned for the same reason as he first resigned from Basie 34 years earlier -- there was too much traveling involved, he said.
Grover Mitchell is the current musical director of the Count Basie Orchestra.
Although he appreciated the opportunity to lead the Basie orchestra, the only bands Foster now wants to lead are his own, he said.
Besides "Loud Minority," Foster also heads up a 10-piece dance band called "Swing Plus," and a quintet, "Non Electric Company," that is strictly a jazz ensemble.
"Jazz is entirely improvisational and to a large degree, compositional," Foster said. "It's largely blues oriented and that's the feel that has to be imparted. It's also a form of music that I insist came out of the Black experience in this country. Jazz is democratic music because any race, nationality and sex can participate. I think it should always be with the acknowledgement that had it not been for the Black experience in America, we wouldn't have jazz as it is."
As a soloist and as a recording artist, Foster's music has grabbed more attention in Europe and Japan than in America.
"Loud Minority" has recorded two albums: Shiny Stockings and Manhattan Fever, both on the Denon label from Japan, which have recently been made available in CD format in the U.S.
During the late 1970s and early 80s, Foster also led a small group, "Living Color," which recorded an album for a Finnish record company called Living Color: 12 Shades Of Black.
"Swing Plus" is a spin off from the "Living Color" group and has not recorded as yet, Foster said.
In the early 1980s, Foster teamed up with fellow ex-Basie-ite Frank Wess to record an album for Pablo Records entitled Two Franks and another album for the Concord jazz label called Frankly Speaking, which was nominated for a Grammy Award.
On June 24, the two Franks will unite once again, backed by a sextet, at the Baltimore Jazz Society Festival in Baltimore, MD.
Last month, Foster performed with a local quartet during a four-day stay in Israel and has also toured this year in Canada, Australia and along the East Coast.
If that isn't enough, Foster, along with his second wife and manager, Cecilia, also runs his own music publication business called "Swing That Music." They have a son and daughter together along with two grandsons. Foster has two sons from his previous marriage as well as two grandsons.
"I distribute my own big band charts and arrangements," Foster said. "Most of these charts were performed and recorded by the Count Basie Orchestra. Of the 50 or so arrangements I sell, some are Basie, some are post-Basie. It's classic jazz for discerning listeners."
Most orders have been for college ensembles, although some charts have been purchased by private groups, Foster said.
Even at age 71, Foster still maintains a clear artistic vision for himself.
"I want to be more active as a writer," he said. "As a player, I want to contribute to my own genre. I don't fancy myself as one of the foremost players of the scene today. I just want to be a stylist as a player. I'm an advanced post hard bop player. I want to carry the big band into the 21st Century with a 'Fosterian' concept, that is, my own idea of what a big band should sound like in this day and age. That sound should be characterized by heavy activity with the brass ensemble. Eighty percent should swing and twenty percent could be a non-rhythmic concertized presentation. I want the swinging rhythm there with the brass shouting contemporary phrases and sophisticated harmonies, but not into the realm of the avant-garde."
Even though Foster has been and continues to be a tenor sax stylist, it is in the area of big band arranging where he feels he has made a lasting contribution, he said.
"I don't think I've contributed as a player in an innovative manner because I'm not an innovator," Foster said. "I have contributed to the Count Basie tradition of the '50s and '60s. I think I'm a damn good arranger and bandleader who hasn't yet gotten his big moment of glory. I'm still looking to work my own band to force my style on the world, whatever part of the world is ready for it! I've been doing this for over 50 years and I have not become a major force in the world of band leadership. I'm just angry enough to stick around until it happens!"
For information concerning "Swing That Music," write to:
Swing That Music, 1706 Woodgrove Street, Chesapeake, VA 23320
(757) 436-0520; FAX (757) 312-8188; Toll Free No. 877-THE BAND
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