The show is over, and the audience as well as the other performers long ago left The Clint Holmes Theatre at Harrah's. Holmes got his usual standing ovation. But on the stage, Ronnie Foster sits playing his keyboard—really just noodling about on it. Standing just behind him are the representatives of Yamaha and Steinberg (creators of sequencer software Cubase and Nuendo) who are in town for the National Association of Broadcasters convention. They are watching Foster play with rapt attention, totally transfixed. Though Foster is a self-taught keyboardist who doesn't read music, he has long been at the forefront in terms of grasping the possibilities in connecting electronic instruments to the computer revolution, and he has endorsement deals with both companies.
"I was just playing around, showing them stuff," Foster says. "It wasn't anything—it was just kind of impromptu. Today, most of the guys in the business are musicians themselves. And that's why the products are so much better than they used to be."
Though probably few who see Foster performing in Holmes' band each night are aware of it, to connoisseurs, Foster has serious renown as a musicians' musician. As a sideman he has played on discs with performers like Stevie Wonder, Roberta Flack, and Robbie Robertson. Mostly though, Foster is known for a series of discs that he made in the '70s. Though little-noticed at the time, decades after their release these discs have become collector's items among acid jazz fans who regard Foster's music as an inspiration.
Back when they were originally released, jazz reviewers often complained about the diversity of Foster's approach to music, in particular the influence of pop, soul and funk on his playing. That's no longer the case. The website allaboutjazz.com earlier this year called for the reissue of Foster's final discs recorded for the Blue Note label, concluding: "Foster's final two Blue Notes have not dated a bit and are a key reminder of the organist's neglected talents." Perhaps more important, and certainly more financially rewarding, Foster's solo recordings have received the ultimate afterlife as a source sampled on some high- profile hip-hop. Foster is a bit bemused, but pleased, by that: "I would never expect that music to be used in the manner it's being used." Foster started out playing piano but switched to organ; he was inspired by the great Hammond B3 player Jimmy Smith (who passed away earlier this year).
To some people, growing up in Buffalo, New York (Foster was born there in 1950), would be a detriment to a future jazz career, but to Foster it was paradise. "Buffalo was a music mecca. You could go on any given night to four or five different clubs." That is if you were legal, but Foster's love of live jazz all started when he was barely a teen. "At one club the owner liked me. I was obviously underage, but he said I could come if I just sat in the corner and did not move. The corner was looking across the stage and so it was the greatest position I could be in. ... I met the Crusaders. I met Herbie Hancock."
It didn't take them long to discover that though self-taught, Foster was a prodigy. He began working professionally at 14. Though jazz musicians, particularly in the '60s, had some notorious vices, they were careful in what they passed onto Foster. "I saw some things. That just kind of went with the territory. But they told me just to play my instrument. The guys that I worked with were old enough to be my dad and they treated me that way. To this day I don't drink or smoke or use drugs."
While still a teenager, Foster's organ playing gained enough of a reputation that he began recording sessions with heavyweights like Grant Green and Stanley Turrentine. On a session with guitar legend George Benson (Foster was 15 when he started working with Benson), Foster's playing made a crucial transformation: "George was the one who switched me from organ to electric keyboard and all of that stuff."
It was the era of fusion and the timing was perfect. Foster was signed to Blue Note and was 21 when he recorded his solo debut, The Two Headed Freap in early 1972. Though the All Music Guide gives the out-of-print recording a remarkable 4 1/2-out-of-5 star rating, Foster was not entirely satisfied with the results: "I was playing some adventurous stuff with my trio at the time, but instead of going into the studio with my musicians, they brought in some studio cats. The direction of some of the original stuff was different than what was put on it. But hey, I was happy recording for Blue Note. The thing I tripped about was seeing my name on a Blue Note label after so many years of listening to those records."
History smiled on that disc because one of the songs, "Mystic Brew," wound up as a sample used as the base in A Tribe Called Quest's 1993 hit, "Electric Relaxation" (which in turn was recently sampled by Kanye West). "My royalty checks for that are bigger than for the entire record."
After five albums with Blue Note, Foster made the leap to the majors and recorded two discs for Colombia Records. There, Foster met Columbia's most famous jazz artist, trumpeter Miles Davis, who was making his most controversial appearances at the time—presenting to some audiences what sounded like a wall of noise in which Davis liked to play keyboard. Foster remembers talking to Davis after one of those shows:
"Miles came up to me and he says in his unmistakable voice, 'You hear that shit I am playing up there: It's bad. I don't mean it's bad, I mean it's really bad.' Right after that he did a picture where he is posing with a girl and a guy, his arms around them, and just as the shutter goes off he turns around and sticks his tongue up her nose."
Though his Columbia discs were not commercially successful and are out of print, they brought Foster to the attention of the label's division in Brazil that hired him as a producer for "Luz" by Djavan. Foster mixed Djavan's own band with musicians he knew, including a cameo from—amazingly enough—Stevie Wonder. "From a production point you wanted keep what was innate to Brazilian music, but you want to also put another little twist on it which I think we accomplished." "Luz" is still considered a classic in Brazil and Foster produced four more discs with Djavan, as well as other artists in Brazil. Foster laughs at the suggestion that he was ahead of the world-music curve by a couple decades: "All music is valid, because music is an expression of someone's emotions. I love Mahler, and one of my favorite bands is Depeche Mode."
It is a cliché in Vegas that Clint Holmes has the best band on the Strip, but few people realize that under Holmes' user-friendly personality, he has created a show that is among the most musically challenging ever presented on the Strip, offering not only mostly original songs but also genre changes that include significant attention to standards, pop, jazz and even opera. So, musicians of Foster's caliber love working Holmes' show. "I admire him for what he is doing because it is not a typical Las Vegas show. I don't think very many people realize how adventurous he is being."
Audiences also don't realize the extraordinary talent on stage with Holmes that make this remarkable and complicated music not only possible, but look easy and fun. That's OK with Foster: "It is an incredible pleasure working with Clint and to be put in a setting with this level of musicality and integrity."