20 Years Hence: A JAM Interview With Gary Foster

Gary Foster is a reeds player and music educator—on alto sax, tenor sax, flutes, and clarinets—with deep roots in jazz and in the Heartland. He's a first-call player for LA-area TV, film, and concert assignments. His long career has spanned the nation, Europe, and Japan . Gary grew up musically and professionally around Kansas City and at the University of Kansas . For many years, and often, he's been coming home to the Heartland, to teach, to record, and for club and concert dates. We met while he was in town this spring for club dates and recording, pausing on the way home to California from a master class and a concert at Tennessee Tech. On July23 he was music director in Topeka for a day and evening of jazz honoring the late major mover for jazz in our area, Jim Monroe. Gary's also had longer academic appointments, both here at UMKC and in California at UCLA. Here he speaks with Charlton Price of JAM on what it takes to make a living as a freelance professional in music and about some of the many people significant for him through his remarkable career.

Gary was the featured artist in the first JAM, 20 years ago.

GARY:This time through KC, I was invited to be guest soloist and give some classes at Tennessee Tech, and came here to Kansas City, on the way home, for a gig and record date with Kerry Strayer and other longtime colleagues and friends….

JAM: It's great that you've been coming back here so often and for so many years.

GARY:I've come back, starting probably about 1968. One of my [KU] college classmates invited me to come out. I was in Los Angeles from 1961. He was teaching and he said why didn't I come out and be guest soloist with his high school band on their spring concert. The next year, a couple of high-school band directors who'd invited me to be there asked me to do it again. My friend Charlie Molina, who owned a music store here, would set up a week of visits. I'd go to Tonganoxie and Hays and Pittsburg and occasionally to one of the universities, and I think it must have been about 1971 or 1972 I played at the music educators' national convention in Omaha . There I hooked up with the Yamaha Band Instrument Company and got an endorsement with them, and that produced a number of other visits to colleges.

What I just did at Tennessee Tech is typical. I arrived Wednesday evening. Thursday I gave a master class for all music students just talking about careers in music and what you do to maintain yourself and all that and how it works. Many who will become school teachers or department chairs or university professors have in their early days the same desire that I had, which was to be a player. This Tennessee Tech group was very congenial—a lovely faculty. On Thursday in the afternoon I met with only the saxophones for a master class. And then we had an evening rehearsal for about two and a half hours, with the jazz ensemble. We repeated that, a shorter version, and I met with some students. And then last night we did a full concert of solo material that I had sent them. Jazz features. Big attendance. The university [was] very enthusiastic.

JAM: In a much more extended version, this is like your relationship has been for so long with UMKC [the University of Missouri , Kansas City ].

GARY:From the fall of 1984 to the spring of 2000 I was visiting faculty here. And I worked in the studio of Tim Timmons, a great saxophone teacher still here. The most enjoyable institutional teaching I've ever done. Mainly because Tim was so good, and the student level here was extremely high. And Mike Parkinson as director, he is now in St. Louis . I admire him very much. Instead of hanging up his playing, as so many are forced to do, he's stayed right with it. We did a concert here every year. Every year he brought a guest. He brought many people here who were my associates in other parts of the world. Toshiko [Akiyoshi] came once, we featured her music. Clare Fischer. Alan Broadbent.

My father [in those years] still lived in Leavenworth . He was getting older and didn't want to move to California . So it was doubly meaningful to have the visits with him. I miss UMKC, but all these other visits [since I was on the faculty] have been enjoyable. Not long ago I was at the Eastman School in Rochester , which was exceptionally good. I've done a number of these kinds of things in California . I did one in Oregon last year. Illinois . It just depends. And it's usually a weekend.

JAM: I guess it keeps growing, because people know you do this.

GARY:I've never solicited the dates. It's strictly word of mouth. In a way, it competes with what I do in Los Angeles , as a performing musician. But that's okay.

In 1996 at the Jazz Bakery, we had a [tribute] event for [our mutual friend] Jimmy Rowles. Tom Garvin was the musical director. Stacy [Rowles] sang and played. Ruth Price sang. Mike Campbell sang. Eric von Essen on bass. Harold Mason on drums.

JAM: One the most precious CDs I have is those [unissued] Sassy [Sarah Vaughan] tracks [with Jimmy].

GARY:No one else has those out-takes.

JAM. And that last date with Conte (Candoli), the Mark Masters Orchestra.

GARY:Mark, now probably approaching 40, played in a college jazz ensemble that I conducted years ago. I've known him as a very serious person. He was in the Stan Ken ton office with Audrey Coke, who managed Stan's estate. He has always wanted to do projects that were off the beaten track musically. The concept for that session with Conte was “the music of Lee Konitz.” But Lee became ill. Mark called me, said, “There are a couple of saxophone features. But I mostly just need someone who's associated with that era.” And he called Conte Candoli. Conte did it, but it was his last gig. He was in terrible shape. I don't think he ever held a trumpet again.

Count [Conte] was one of those guys; you just can't imagine how everybody loved him. That was the most genuine hook-up in jazz of a human being and an instrument that ever existed. We later recorded all that music, with Lee [Konitz]. It's done under Mark's label, which is called The American Jazz Institute. The label is operated, owned, and endowed by the Claremont Colleges. We did another with Mark earlier, the Jimmy Knepper Song Book. We just recorded one with Mark, for AJI, [of] the music of Gary McFarland. Steve Kuhn, Tim Hagans, Gary Smulyan, bass player Ray Drummond, Joe LaBarbera the drummer, and myself, and it's all Gary McFarland originals. Everything Mark does is very high quality, and it's esoteric, too.

JAM: I'd like to go back to the little Gary [Foster], in Leavenworth . How did a nice person like you get into all this?

GARY:One of the first things I try to do in the master classes, I do it everywhere, in the first five minutes, I like to tell a group of university students what I was thinking about when I was their age. In Leavenworth , Kansas , in the seventh grade I had a clarinet. I didn't care for it much. But when I was in eighth grade there was a new band director named Olin Parker. He played the clarinet and the saxophone and the trumpet and he was “The Music Man.” Suddenly the clarinet I didn't care much for became something I really wanted to do. He gave me private lessons. I got hooked on it.

About the middle of that year he said, “I've got some dance band stocks [arrangements]—let's get a little dance band together.” My folks bought me a used saxophone, and, man, was I hooked then. I'm quite sure that at age 14 was the first time I heard Ebony Concerto [by the Woody Herman band, a piece composed for them by Igor Stravinsky], that Jimmy [Rowles] was on.

The stocks from Mr. Parker had notes stacked up, and it said “ad lib.” Listening to Basie, when the solo came on, Lester Young or whoever, I asked Mr. Parker, “What is that? How is that person doing that?” I couldn't even arpeggiate those chords. He said, “Well, the belief is that you're either born with that ability, or you don't have it.” This was more than 20 years before jazz education ever became important. So I didn't know if I had it or not. I kept playing along with the radio. By the time I was 15 I had a little trio—drums, piano, and tenor. We played a New Year's Eve party at the Knights of Columbus. I could read, and I could fake. Another man in town, Harold Stanford, played bass; he called me up and said. “We play every Friday and Saturday at the VFW Hall, and I need a tenor player.” They served liquor, but my father said it would be okay because this guy was kind of my chaperone. And Peggy [now Gary 's wife] and I had met that year, my freshman year in high school. And she became the hat-check girl. So I got a whole lot of baptism by someone just saying, “play now.” There were big bands in Kansas City and St. Joe. My folks liked to dance; I'd go up and stand at the bandstand on the breaks. I remember talking to Corky Corcoran in the Harry James band. Herbie Steward of the [Woody Herman] Four Brothers, he played lead [at that time] with Harry James, he was very friendly. When the Stan Ken ton band came around, people like Charlie Mariano were there. In 1953, 1953, or 1954 was the Big Jazz Tour of the World, Ken ton, with Charlie Parker and Stan Getz. I had my tickets. It was down here [ Kansas City ] at the Music Hall on a Sunday afternoon. I had my tickets. But Harold Stanford had got a four-hour gig at the local country club. “ Oh, man,” he said, “please don't take off, I really need you.” So the one time I would have heard Bird, I didn't.

JAM: Back to growing up...

GARY:In high school in my last semester I heard the Central Missouri College wind ensemble, 38 pieces, on the Fayette campus. I heard the huge band at KU. As a senior I'd been going out to jam with the soldiers at Ft. Leavenworth , the 371st Band. One of trumpet players, Paul Montamuro, who now lives in St. Joe, and I decided to go to college together. I was in Fayette for two years. The wind ensemble there was everything I wanted it to be. But I wanted to study the clarinet. You couldn't study sax in the college in those days. No saxophone was taught. One of my high school colleagues was at KU. He said the clarinet teacher at KU was great. So spring break 1956, Peggy and I had just gotten married, we folded up at Fayette, lived at home for a summer, then moved to Lawrence, for a whole year.

One guy absolutely straightened me out. His name was Don Scheid. He was my mentor. I had my own jazz group at KU. At a point when Carmell Jones came to KU, we had a quintet. Carmell, he was a giant. In 1960 we took a quintet to the Notre Dame Jazz Festival. We got a nice mention in Downbeat . The music department at KU couldn't have cared less in any way about us in any way representing the school. “You're doing this on your own hook,” they said.

I was totally committed to the classical side, which made it odd. I have a bachelor's in music performance, a degree in music education, and graduate work in musicology, but not a degree. It was just when we moved to California . Trying to get established there—if it was a matter of coming back for a semester, or a summer—but that was out of the question. Because we were just trying to get established there.

JAM: How California ?

GARY:About the time we went to Notre Dame, I met Matt Betton, who was a music store owner in Manhattan . He had a tape of us and kindly played it for Stan Ken ton, at one of the Ken ton summer camps. Stan said to him, “Have that tenor player come and see me.” So the next time they [ Ken ton] played at the Frog Hop [hall in St. Joseph ], I went. I introduced myself to Stan, we went in the back room, and he was very direct, very kind, and very solicitous of young people. I could name you 50 people who would say that he changed their lives. He said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I'm a grad student at University of Kansas , teaching half time in a public school.” Maybe not... maybe I was just a senior. “So,” he said, “What do you want to do? You want to play, don't you?” I said, “Yeah, I really do.” “Well, you probably have to go to New York or Los Angeles . So finish your degrees. That's the smartest thing you can do. And I'll try to work you into the band.”

Next time I saw him he said, “You got your horn?” I said yes. He said, “Sit in.” That was either at the Pla-Mor here in KC, or the Frog Hop in St. Jo. So in the back room again, for just 5 minutes, he said, “Could you join the band in Chicago , in two weeks' time?” [I told him that] is when I was teaching half time [and finishing grad school]. So he said, “We're going to work only about 6 weeks more, and then I'm taking 6 months off. So don't come now.” So I never did play with the band. Stan would write me a letter once in awhile.

The next year I was made a teaching assistant at the university and my teacher, Don Scheid, was promoted to Associate Dean. He said, we'll give you the entering freshman clarinet students, you'll have an office, and you'll have that credit when you graduate. Then I got a letter from Stan. He said, “I know I talked to you about joining the band. But I'm going to take it a little easy, and I've hired Sam Donohue to be associate leader, and please come and see us when we're there.” We went west basically on Stan's advice. Stan had said: “If you want to come back for your PhD later, you can. But if you buy your house and settle down, don't go out to try to live your dreams, you'll never do it. So start.”

I usually advise people to complete their education. But if a person is really good, and he has the drive to do it, and he can, I never say just come to LA. He's going to get killed. You get there and you have to stack your assets against your liabilities. There are guys here who can do all this much. I can do this much.

It all takes time. I had good clarinet and some good jazz. The reason we moved to LA was a guy named Bill Hardy, who eventually owned Revelation Records. Carmell was working as a porter on the railroad. Bill Hardy couldn't believe that this gifted musician was working as a porter. [He said,] “Carmell, quit the job come to LA, live in my house, I'll take you around, and you'll sit in.” That was in the fall in 1960. So Bill took him to the Drift Inn, he sat in with Bud Shank, and in a month he had recorded with Bud Shank. Bud introduced him to Gerald Wilson. And that was the famous Gerald Wilson band of the early 1960s, with Harold Land and Carmell Jones. Then the great quintet: Carmell, Harold , Leon Pettis, Gary Peacock, and Frank Strazzeri recorded for Pacific Jazz. By the time we moved out there in August of 1961, Carmell was a landmark. Bill Hardy put us up at his house, for a couple of weeks. Carmell was still living there. There was no way what I was or am or could ever be was close to what Carmell was as a player. He had world-shaking ability to play and to command anybody's attention. He was there before Freddie Hubbard or Lee Morgan or Blue Mitchell or Booker Little. He stayed in LA until 64. I was just barely getting entry-level dance gigs. We had our daughter by then and an old car and about $600—“Let's go live our dream!” I think it was easier to do that 40 years ago. Anybody who is in the position I was in then, I would tell them not to do it. It was an adventure, and I think youth permits a lot of that. I'm really lucky—I've been able to wind up making a living as a player. And that happened because I met Clare Fischer shortly after I moved out there.

JAM: Tell me about Clare Fischer.

GARY:In 1962 his first trio album for Pacific Jazz was just about to be released. Bill Hardy, whom I mentioned earlier, was writing the liner notes. We went down to the mixing session. Afterward Clare said to Bill and me, “You want to come up to the apartment for a cup of coffee?” He puts on a record of Cal Tjader playing Harold Arlen tunes, with a big orchestra. Clare said he wrote all the arrangements for this. I ask, “ Do you have the scores?” [He says] “Can you read the score?” Yes, I said. I had studied conducting at KU with a great conductor. We got down on the floor with these big pages. I said to myself, here's a guy who knows more about writing with jazz and classical influences than anyone I've ever met. I asked if he would help me with arrangements. I was playing bar mitzvahs, dance gigs, anything I could get. He told me that when he was 14 in Michigan he was thrilled by [Stravinsky's] “The Rite of Spring”. At about the same time he heard Ellington's “Black Brown and Beige”, and the early Ellington concert at Carnegie Hall. Clare: “This all just slipped into my mind as something that just melded together.” Then he started to transcribe, by ear. “I'm just a composer, these things run together.” [Later] he called me. “Can you play a dance gig? I've got a real good dance gig at the Riviera Country Club. Got to the gig, dark suit, and the bass player was Red Mitchell and the drummer was Larry Bunker. Wow! We were all there for $35. Shortly after that was Tijuana Brass. And so you had to play that kind of thing so you could do it commercially as needed. Clare put together a big band in 1965. Bud Shank was there and I was second alto. Lee Konitz was a strong influence then, though he was in New York . As was Warne Marsh. I was around 26. Someone asked, do you play the flute? You should learn, because you could probably play in the studios.

I got [as a] teacher a player in the LA Philharmonic. It was $10. I could go only maybe twice a month. Clare called me and asked me to do the George Shearing bossa nova record, for Columbia . “It's five woodwinds and George's quintet, and I'm doing the arrangements. You play flute, alto flute, clarinet, and bass clarinet.” I told him I wasn't ready to be heard on the flute yet. He told me who else [would be on the date], and they were the top guys in town. As they say, you're only as good as your last 8 bars. I kept working on the flute, [Clare] wrote some parts for me, then I got called do a television show, in the 60s. I kept getting little bits of things, record dates. Maybe you're third or fourth call or somebody else can't make it. Often you get dumped into something you're not really up to, but you just have to swing.

JAM: You're telling me that if you have the chops, and you persist, and you get the usual breaks, you can have a really interesting and lucrative career.

GARY:It's much harder now.

Some colleagues who were great musicians moved out west with a composer-conductor named Peter Matz. He made a big splash with Streisand. He had done Once Upon a Mattress with Carol Burnett in New York . She wanted him in California . I met one of the Matz group, Joe Solder, who played the same instruments I did. Joe said, “I do contracting too, and I want to put you on this gig” I had worked real hard on flute by then. [Joe said, “I need a sub for a tenor player who plays bassoon. Is there any chance you could play the bassoon parts on the bass clarinet? You'll have to transcribe, the instrument is in a different key.” Could I? Sure. Good old Don Scheib at KU! The next year, Joe moved over to be a contractor for TV. The contractor can't be one of the orchestra members. So Joe hired me to play first chair.

The Burnett show was the single most validating thing that ever happened to me. Starting about 1973, for Carol's weekly show, I did the last 6 years, 26 weeks, and reruns. I was working. I was happy, I was raising a family. Joe Solder and Peter Matz hired me to play the Carol Burnett Show and the phone started ringing. I've played the Oscars for 24 years. I think this year is the 24 th .

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