First-hand knowledge from Al Foster about his years with Sonny Rollins & Miles Davis

Last Tuesday I went to hear Peter Bernstein quartet with my friends Eviatar Slivnik and Tom Oren.

After the concert we got to spend some time with Al Foster and I took some notes.

- “I used to practice playing along with records and people would come up to my apt thinking that it was a band playing, that’s how I got some gigs when I was young”.

- “The brothers, the ones that look like me, don’t want to say this but you have to be real Buddy Rich was the cleanest, my parents brought me to see him many times, and you know I come from Max Roach. I saw him playing many times, even with an arm in the cast it was ridiculous how he would be able to catch all the hits. Have you seen the video of his last performance?”

- “I remember when Tony came along, then Joe Chambers, very minimalist but swinging like a mf, then Jack he was free but still swinging very hard, and I was trying to sound like Max Roach. I understood that I had to find my own style and I think that finally I found it”.

- “Once I said to Sonny Rollins : ‘when I am going to be 50 I’m going to have my own style’. Can you imagine I said that to Sonny? He was like ‘Well Al, ok man’”.

- “Sonny Rollins was my Idol, I never took music lesson and I learned about harmony listening to Sonny Rollins. I also bought a saxophone at some point, I bought a Mark 6 for a thousand dollars and I was trying to copy Sonny Rollins, I wasn’t that good but I could do something and I played for Miles once and he was like ‘You sound like Newk’. I took some saxophone lessons with that guy what’s his name? The guy who moved to NYC with Freddie Hubbard. Me :' ‘James Spaulding?’ ‘Yes him’”.

- “Sonny hired me to play with him in the ‘60s at Village Vanguard (with Wilbur Ware on bass and Albert Dailey on piano) and I remember coming downstairs with the gretch that my dad bought for me when I was 10 years old, Sonny was practicing. I played up until wed and on thurs Sonny called me telling me that he wanted to try something different, man I was crying, he was my idol you know. Then I discovered that also Wilbur ware got fired so I didn’t feel as bad. After that I didn’t get to play with Sonny until 1978”.

- “I started playing with Miles in 1973 with the band with Michael Henderson on bass. I used to hang a lot with Miles, he once brought me to Sly Stone’s apartment and you know it was a very nice hang Sly had three white chicks with beautiful dresses. Sly had his cowboy hat on and started playing the bass line of single he just released (don’t remember name). Sly said ‘Hey Miles do you remember when you pointed the gun at me? I knew you weren’t going to shoot me hahah’ They were laughing about it”.

- “I was 16 the first time I went to see Miles (circa 1959) live and I brought my Milestones record and I wanted him to sign it and he didn’t and he said ‘Get out of my face’, I said ‘I’m never going to buy his records anymore’. Later on I told Miles this story and I caught him doing the same thing years later with a fan and I kicked the heel of his shoe and he signed it, while doing it he said ‘Fuck You Al’”.

- “Last concert with Miles the manager called me and told me everyone is going to be there, Herbie, Wayne etc… he told me everyone was getting payed $2000… At that time I was playing with Herbie and he told he didn’t know if he was going to do it cause they offered him only $5000, I was like ‘I want what you don’t want Herbie’. So I called Miles directly and told him that I wanted $5000 he hung up, my wife said you’re not going to get the gig anymore. Then I got it”.

- “My first gigs were with Erskine Hawkins and Illinois Jacquet. I’ve played with them for years”.