Pops Foster: The Man Who Invented the Jazz Bass Line

The Man Who Invented the Jazz Bass Line

Before Pops Foster, the bass in a jazz band was more felt than heard—a thumping pulse that kept time but rarely commanded attention. Foster changed that. With a slap bass technique so forceful you could hear it across a crowded dance hall, and a musical personality so large that even Louis Armstrong's band couldn't contain it, Foster turned the string bass from a piece of furniture into a voice.

George Murphy Foster was born in 1892 in McCall, Louisiana, a small town in the plantation country. His mother was nearly full-blooded Cherokee, and the family moved to New Orleans when he was about ten. The city was in the middle of the musical explosion that would become jazz, and young Foster was pulled straight into it. He started on cello, switched to string bass, and also played tuba and trumpet—because in early New Orleans, versatility wasn't optional.

By 1907, Foster was playing professionally in New Orleans, working with the bands that were defining the sound of the city. He played with Kid Ory, one of the great early trombonists and bandleaders. He played with King Oliver. He played on the riverboats that carried New Orleans music up and down the Mississippi. He was part of the first generation of jazz musicians, learning the language of the music as it was being invented.

What set Foster apart was his approach to the instrument. In an era when most bass players bowed their instruments or played with a relatively gentle pizzicato, Foster attacked his bass with a slapping technique that produced a percussive, booming sound that cut through the noise of dance halls and parade routes. It wasn't subtle, but it was effective—and it was thrilling. His bass didn't just keep time; it drove the band forward like an engine.

In 1929, Foster joined Louis Armstrong's band in New York, and he stayed for over a decade. Playing with Armstrong was the pinnacle for any jazz musician, and Foster's propulsive bass was the foundation that Armstrong's virtuosity danced on. The recordings from this period capture one of the great rhythm sections in jazz history.

Foster earned his nickname because he was considerably older than most of his bandmates—he'd been playing since the music's earliest days, and by the time he was working in New York, he was already a veteran. The younger musicians called him Pops with a mixture of affection and respect. He was the link to the beginning, the guy who'd been there when it all started.

He kept playing through the traditional jazz revival of the 1940s and '50s, a beloved elder statesman of a music he'd helped create. He died in 1969 in San Francisco at seventy-seven. Pops Foster didn't just play the bass in early jazz—he defined what the bass was supposed to do. Every jazz bassist who came after him, from Jimmy Blanton to Charles Mingus, was building on the foundation that the kid from McCall, Louisiana, laid down in the dance halls of New Orleans.