al foster – Practicing Drummer

It’s been a busy couple of weeks here, but I’m happy to announce that I have plans to record another podcast interview soon. Hope everyone is having a good start to December.

New Releases From Smoke

Billy Hart – Multidirectional (live from Smoke)

Al Foster – Live at Smoke

This isn’t from Al’s live record, but it’s a great video that I keep going back to.

Mel Lewis on the History of Jazz Drums

I was reminded about this on the on a recent episode of Drummer Nation where Michael Vosbein and Adam Nussbaum are joined by Kenny Washington and John Riley to talk about Mel Lewis.

This is a 32(!) video playlist of Mel Lewis on Loren Schoenberg’s radio show in 1989, exploring the history of jazz drumming from Baby Dodds to Elvin Jones.

Bill Stewart with John Scofield

I saw this band a few weeks ago in Minneapolis and just found this great video of them from SF Jazz.

Greg Hutchinson with Pablo Held

This is a very nice concert. I spend so much time listening to Pablo’s podcast that it was nice to hear some more of his music. Very impressive player and composer. I’m inspired to dig deeper.

Allan Mednard @ Stephan’s Basement

This series is so cool and Allan is just fantastic.

Philly Joe Brush Solos

Finally, here’s something fun I found the other day. I’m not sure how complete this is, but it’s inspiring to hear all these solos back to back.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Al Foster since he passed last week. It’s been really moving to see all the photos and memories people have been sharing on social media. He was such a beautiful player—and a beautiful human.

I was lucky enough to see him play a couple of times—once when I was too young to fully grasp how special his playing was, and then again a few years ago at Mezzrow. That night, I had planned to catch both of Billy Drummond’s sets at Smalls, but after the first one, I decided I couldn’t miss the chance to see Al—so I headed over.

I worked up the nerve to say hi to him afterward, and he gave me one of the warmest greetings I’ve ever received—truly memorable. I mentioned that I’d just come from seeing Billy. Al grinned and said, “Billy’s a bad motherf#cker!”

Now, back to why I originally wanted to make this post. I revisited the 2022 interview with Al Foster that Joe Farnsworth did for DownBeat magazine. If you haven’t checked it out, there’s a lot of great stuff in there—including a story about a drum battle he had with Billy Hart and Philly Joe Jones! (Full text below just in case the link ever disappears.)

Finally, here’s one of my favorite videos of Al Foster with Joe Henderson.

RIP

Tag: al foster

Journal #4