1 FRANK FOSTER NEA Jazz Master (2002) Interviewee
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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. Cincinnati was I think the third largest city in Ohio, located in the southwest corner of the state and the hub, the musical hub of what’s referred to in that area as the tri-state area—Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. Cincinnati was a very culturally diverse town, principally resided in by people of German ancestry, and I suppose there was a large influx of blacks from the south. Cincinnati has been referred to as one of the gateways to the south. One of the strongest cultural institutions in Cincinnati is the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, associated with the University of Cincinnati. In the 1930s, during which period I grew up, and the ’40s, the Conservatory did not admit African-Americans as students. In fact most areas of activities in Cincinnati were segregated at that time. I grew up in the midst of a strong musical heritage because it was almost like a sort of crossroads for big bands coming back and forth across the country. There was an establishment called the Coliseum, which was a big dancehall. All the big bands came through and played there, the well-known bands, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Erskine Hawkins, et cetera. Maybe I should backtrack a bit and go into my own personal history before going too much into the history of the city itself. Brower: That would be fine. How did you come to play an instrument in your own family? Were your parents musicians? Were there musical influences or opportunities for that outlet within your family? Foster: There were no musicians per se in my family. I had a brother who was six years my senior. My father and mother kept an upright piano. This was a fact of most black households at the time. Most households had an upright piano. A good many of them had player pianos. We didn’t have a player piano, but we did have this upright. My mother started both my brother, who was at the time 11 years old and I was six years of age, she started us both on piano lessons with the same instructor. I took piano lessons for a year. Brower: Excuse me. Who was the instructor? Do you remember? Foster: A gentleman by the name of Artie Matthews, who’s a very interesting personality. I’ll have to go into detail about him very shortly. Brower: Come back to that. For additional information contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or [email protected] 3 Foster: I took piano lessons for roughly six months before I suffered a tragic incident. I was struck in the street by a cement mixing truck. I had to be hospitalized for two months with a compound fracture of the leg. That, along with the rehabilitation period that followed, brought my piano lessons to an end. I didn’t resume music lessons until age 11, when I decided to take up the clarinet. My brother at this time was a teenager. He was listening to the bands of Count Basie, Jimmie Lunceford, and Duke Ellington, et cetera, and he started me listening. In fact at age eight he started me listening to all these bands. Brower: So this is 1931, ’32. Foster: We’re talking about late ’30s -- ’38, ’39, ’40. I started taking music lessons, wind instrument music lessons around 1940, but from say ’37 on, he had started me listening to the big bands. Brower: Okay, because ’28 -- I’m thinking ’28 is your birth, so okay, ’38, ’39. Foster: Right. Brower: Just before we go, what did your father do? Foster: My father was a postal clerk. He worked -- this is the only job I’ve ever known him to hold, for my entire life, until he retired in his sixties. He was a postal clerk in the main post office in Cincinnati, Ohio, downtown Cincinnati. Brower: And how about your -- Foster: My mother worked as a welfare worker. You’d refer to it as a social worker at the time. She was also a teacher. She was a kindergarten instructor, and she founded her own daycare center right in her house. It wasn’t called a daycare center. It was called a playschool for tiny tots. In other words, she was her own -- she was a daycare entrepreneur, so to speak. Later she went on to get her Masters degree at the University of Cincinnati, and she went into teaching. She taught English and speech. She did so privately for a number of years. Then she took a position as a professor at Wilberforce University. Brower: You mentioned your brother. What was his name? Foster: Charles Amos Foster was his name. He was born -- Brower: Were there other siblings, other children in the family? For additional information contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or [email protected] 4 Foster: No other siblings, just -- Brower: So it would be fair to say that -- did your father have a college education also, some? Foster: No, he didn’t. He had a high school education, no college. Brower: In that period this would be a middle-class family in the black community? Foster: Yes, it would be a middle class family. Brower: Where in Cincinnati did -- what was the actual -- Foster: We lived in a suburb of Cincinnati called Walnut Hills. Now that sounds more swank or bourgeois then it really is. Brower: It wasn’t Rockdale or Reading Road. Foster: That’s right. Brower: It wasn’t Avondale. Foster: It wasn’t that far though [laughs]. It was right around the corner from Rockdale and Reading Road. We lived on a street called Stanton Avenue, which is only blocks from Rockdale. Yeah, it would be considered a middle-class family. Brower: So when you’re saying for example that a piano would be typical, it’s probably more typical of a black middle-class family to have that instrument -- Foster: Exactly. Yes. Brower: -- than a general family in the black community or a family not so well positioned, two incomes, professional, semi-professional, whatever situation. Foster: Exactly, yes. As far back as I can remember there were always two incomes. Brower: I stopped you at a point to clarify some things about your parents and your background when you were beginning to talk about your first introduction in terms of bands and things that you were hearing around the same time you got into playing wind instruments. Can we go back there? For additional information contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or [email protected] 5 Foster: Certainly. I think it’s most important to say that at a very early age I discovered that I had a strong appreciation for music, music that I refer to now as quality music. For instance when I was five years of age, I really got off on Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite and things of that nature. I didn’t hear any jazz per se until I was about nine years old. It’s not that it wasn’t -- I wasn’t frequenting places where at that age -- I wasn’t hearing much on the radio, but I was hearing a lot of classical music and popular music, and my mother regularly took me to what was referred to as the summer opera at the Cincinnati Zoo. They had a pavilion where they had operatic performances every summer. I saw most of the major operas by the time I was ten years of age. I really loved classical music and some of the better popular songs of the day, but I’d like to say that very early I developed a taste for quality music and a distaste for garbage. Brower: When you resumed music lessons after you had the introduction to piano -- Foster: At age 11 I resumed.