Serenity

First thoughts for Al Foster

The death of drummer Al Foster on Thursday, May 29, 2025, at the age of 82 is a major and painful loss. A generation is departing, leaving it to us to carry on. Nate Chinen composed a moving obituary, and Ethan Iverson’s beautiful note helped a great deal.

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Bebop is the thread, connecting all eras. Joe Henderson and Al Foster (with various wonderful bassists including Ron Carter, Charlie Haden, Cecil McBee, Rufus Reid, and Dave Holland) were, according to some eyewitnesses, the greatest bebop-oriented jazz team of the Eighties and Nineties, maybe even of all time.

For Miles Davis’s birthday, I listened over and over to the original “Now’s The Time” from 1945, where Miles brings an angel glow to Bird’s pensive blues. In 1972, when Davis seemed to drop the last vestiges of bebop from his music, Al Foster’s artful and sophisticated backbeats gently imbued Davis’s radical new music with ancient wisdom, undergirded by Foster’s understanding and love of Miles.

Foster’s backbeats have such nuance and beauty in part because of his love and knowledge of Max Roach and Art Taylor, of Joe Chambers and Tony Williams. Certainly no other member of Davis’s mid-Seventies groups could sound right at home on Biting The Apple (SteepleChase), a great Dexter Gordon session from 1976 with Sam Jones and Barry Harris, or could have played on Blue Mitchell’s The Thing To Do (Blue Note, 1964), Foster’s first record date and and as auspicious a debut as there’s ever been.

On “Step Lightly”, Foster and bassist Gene Taylor are sublime. Their smooth, unhurried 4/4 is classic Blue Note, a major technical and conceptual achievement that should be noticed and celebrated, but there’s more. Behind Mitchell and a young Chick Corea, Foster deploys a few details, including stray hi-hat accents, eighth notes on the bass drum, and left-hand journeys around the kit, that tell us he already has a personal vocabulary within the idiom.

“Step Lightly” is a Joe Henderson tune; in a sense, this is the first recording of Al Foster and Joe Henderson. At the time, Henderson was deep into his collaboration with trumpeter Kenny Dorham. Kenny Dorham, of course, was one of Charlie Parker’s closest collaborators. Joe got it from the source. Bebop is the connector.

When I heard that Foster had passed, I reached for “Serenity”, from An Evening With Joe Henderson (Red Records, 1988), with Joe, Foster, and bassist Charlie Haden, effervescent magic undergirded by a command of bebop. It’s all here.

Foster starts with brushes, splashing beat four with the hi-hat, a Foster trademark, and reaching for sticks in Henderson’s first chorus, Foster plays some of Joe’s rhythms right back at him, so great. When I’ve done this, or heard it done by someone my age, it’s so self-aware that it stops whatever momentum has been building. But here, Foster seems as astonished by Joe and by his own response as we are. It’s beautiful and true, and therefore pushes the music forward.

As the atmosphere heats up, Foster, with a natural, breath-like flow, deploys his personal vocabulary: hi-hat splashes, tom-tom melodies, and vocal-like exclamations between the bass drum and snare while Henderson solos for the ages. Foster on “Serenity” is a complete musical statement, while also a supportive counterpart to Henderson. Beneath the surface excitement, there’s a sense of quietude here, one that allows the elliptical brilliance of Henderson and Foster to come shining through. Al Foster is playing his personal bebop vocabulary at (occasionally) maximum density and volume, while conveying a sense of inner peace and mediative calm, of serenity. He’s showing us how to live.

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A Joe Henderson trio concert in the early afternoon around July 4th, 1993, courtesy my father, was an early jazz conversion experience. I had no idea what they were playing, but I can vividly recall Joe, Dave Holland, and Al Foster on the stage, exuding slyness, humor, satisfaction and joy. Foster’s drum solo went right inside me.

Al Foster’s music was one of wisdom, humility, humor, grace, individuality, and integrity. He enriched our lives, and for this, we are all so grateful.

More soon.