One of the first important bassists of Jazz, Pops Foster (May 19, 1892 – October 29, 1969) was playing in bands around New Orleans as early as 1906. He played tuba with Fate Marable’s group on riverboats from 1918 to 1921 and was with Kid Ory ‘s band in California. Foster worked in St. Louis in the mid 1920s, with both Charlie Creath and Dewy Jackson.
He moved to New York in 1928. Foster played with King Oliver and then joined the Luis Russell Orchestra. Pops stayed with Russell thorughout the period of 1935 to 1940 when the orchestra was really the backup group for Louis Armstrong. After that gig ended, Foster was a popular figure in the Dixieland revival, freelancing with many bands including ones led by Mezz Mezzrow and Sidney Bechet. He played with Earl Hines in San Francisco from 1956 to 1961 and then spent 1963 to 1964 with Elmer Snowden’s trio.
| Pops Foster; the autobiography of a New Orleans Jazzman as told to Tom Stoddard, University of California Press, 1971. |
Redhotjazz.com was a pioneering website during the "Information wants to be Free" era of the 1990s. In that spirit we are recovering the lost data from the now defunct site and sharing it with you.
Most of the music in the archive is in the form of MP3s hosted on Archive.org or the French servers of Jazz-on-line.com where this music is all in the public domain.
Files unavailable from those sources we host ourselves. They were made from original 78 RPM records in the hands of private collectors in the 1990s who contributed to the original redhotjazz.com. They were hosted as .ra files originally and we have converted them into the more modern MP3 format. They are of inferior quality to what is available commercially and are intended for reference purposes only. In some cases a Real Audio (.ra) file from Archive.org will download. Don't be scared! Those files will play in many music programs, but not Windows Media Player.
