1 Funding for the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program NEA Jazz Master interview was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. FRANK FOSTER NEA Jazz Master (2002) Interviewee: Frank Foster (September 23, 1928 – July 26, 2011) Interviewer: William Brower, Jr. (1948 - ) Date: September 24, September 25, and November 22, 1998 Repository: Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution Description: Transcript, 178 pp. Note: Expletives have been deleted from this Web version of the transcript, and are marked thus: [expletive deleted]. An unaltered transcript is available for use by researchers at the Archives Center, National Museum of American History. Brower: My name is William Brower, Jr., interviewer. Sitting across from me is Franklin Benjamin Foster, informant, and recording this interview is Matt Watson, directing the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program. It is September 24, 1998. We are in a radio recording facility of the National Museum of American History and about to commence an oral history/life history interview of Mr. Foster. I’d like to begin by asking you to establish for us the facts of your birth and family. If you would extend from that, talk a bit about your earliest recollections of the community in which you were raised. Foster: I was born Frank Benjamin Foster the Third at 2:15 a.m., September 23rd, 1928, to Lillian Watts Foster and Frank B. Foster. My mother’s maiden name was Lillian Iona Watts. My mother and father were natives of South Carolina, my father from Greenville and my mother from Seneca. My father came north with the idea of For additional information contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or
[email protected] 2 marrying a northern girl, and he ended up marrying this girl [laughs] from his home state.