Al Foster, the jazz drummer who played in bands led by Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, among others, has died. Foster’s daughter Kierra Foster-Ba shared the news on Instagram and his longtime partner, Bonnie Rose Steinberg, told NPR that he died “from a serious illness.” He was 82.
Born in 1943 in Richmond, Virginia, Aloysius Tyrone Foster grew up in Harlem, the second oldest of five siblings. His first musical idol was bebop drummer Max Roach, whose 1955 recording of “Cherokee” inspired a 12-year-old Foster to begin practicing every day on the drum kit his father had previously gifted him. The budding musician got his first experience working as a studio musician on Blue Mitchell’s 1964 album The Thing to Do, which also featured a young Chick Corea. Foster’s big break, however, arrived a few years later, when Miles Davis saw him perform at a jazz club on New York’s Upper West Side and recruited the drummer to join his band.
Foster toured with Davis until the latter’s temporary retirement in 1975, and his work can be heard on live albums such as In Concert, Agharta, and Dark Magus. He also played on the Davis several studio LPs On the Corner and Big Fun (1974). The extended jazz-funk jam “Mr. Foster,” recorded during the On the Corner sessions, was named in his honor. Saxophonist Sonny Rollins had previously fired Foster from his band after their first gig together in 1968, but would bring him on tour in Europe a decade later, and even claimed that “Harlem Boys,” from his 1979 album Don’t Ask, was inspired by the two musicians’ similar upbringings.
Throughout the late ’70s and ’80s, Foster also backed up pianists Hancock, McCoy Tyner, and Horace Silver. In 1978, he became one of four members in the Milestones Jazzstars—a label-made supergroup that also featured Rollins, Tyner, and bassist Ron Carter—and in 1985, both he and Carter lent their talents to saxophone virtuoso Joe Henderson’s The State of the Tenor, Vols. 1 & 2.
Foster continued composing and performing until just months before his death, holding a longstanding residency at the Upper West Side club Smoke and sharing his last album, Reflections, in 2022. In 1989’s Miles: The Autobiography, co-written with Quincy Troupe, Davis wrote that “Al could set shit up for everybody else to play off and then he could keep the groove going forever…for what I wanted in a drummer, Al Foster had it all.”
