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George Murphy "Pops" Foster (May 19, 1892 - October 29, 1969) was a jazz
Jazz

Jazz is a primarily American musical art form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions....
 musician
Musician

A musician is a person who plays or writes music. Musicians can be classified by their roles in creating or performing music:* An instrumentalist plays a musical instrument....
 best known for his vigorous playing of the string bass. He also played the tuba
Tuba

The tuba is the largest and lowest pitched brass instrument. Sound is produced by vibrating or "buzzing" the lips into a large cupped Mouthpiece ....
 and trumpet
Trumpet

The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest Register in the brass instrument family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BC....
 professionally.

Foster was born to Charley and Annie Foster on a plantation
Plantation

A plantation is usually a large farm or Estate , especially in a tropical or semitropical country, like Brazil or Nicaragua on which cotton, tobacco, lice coffee, sugar cane and the like are cultivated, usually by resident laborers....
 near McCall in Ascension Parish near Baton Rouge in south Louisiana
Louisiana

The State of Louisiana is a U.S. state located in the U.S. Southern States of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans....
. His family moved to New Orleans when he was about ten years of age. His older brother, Willard Foster, began playing banjo
Banjo

The banjo is a stringed instrument developed by Slavery in the United States Africans in the United States, adapted from several African instruments....
 and guitar
Guitar

The guitar is a musical instrument with ancient roots that is used in a wide variety of musical styles. It typically has six Strings , but Tenor guitar, Seven-string guitar, Eight-string guitar, Ten-string guitar, Eleven-string guitar, Twelve-string guitar, Thirteen-string guitar and doubleneck guitar string guitars also exist....
; George started out on a cello
Cello

The violoncello is a bowed string instrument. A person who plays a cello is called a cellist. The cello is used as a solo instrument, in chamber music, and as a member of the string section of an orchestra....
 then switched to string bass.






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George Murphy "Pops" Foster (May 19, 1892 - October 29, 1969) was a jazz
Jazz

Jazz is a primarily American musical art form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions....
 musician
Musician

A musician is a person who plays or writes music. Musicians can be classified by their roles in creating or performing music:* An instrumentalist plays a musical instrument....
 best known for his vigorous playing of the string bass. He also played the tuba
Tuba

The tuba is the largest and lowest pitched brass instrument. Sound is produced by vibrating or "buzzing" the lips into a large cupped Mouthpiece ....
 and trumpet
Trumpet

The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest Register in the brass instrument family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BC....
 professionally.

Foster was born to Charley and Annie Foster on a plantation
Plantation

A plantation is usually a large farm or Estate , especially in a tropical or semitropical country, like Brazil or Nicaragua on which cotton, tobacco, lice coffee, sugar cane and the like are cultivated, usually by resident laborers....
 near McCall in Ascension Parish near Baton Rouge in south Louisiana
Louisiana

The State of Louisiana is a U.S. state located in the U.S. Southern States of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans....
. His family moved to New Orleans when he was about ten years of age. His older brother, Willard Foster, began playing banjo
Banjo

The banjo is a stringed instrument developed by Slavery in the United States Africans in the United States, adapted from several African instruments....
 and guitar
Guitar

The guitar is a musical instrument with ancient roots that is used in a wide variety of musical styles. It typically has six Strings , but Tenor guitar, Seven-string guitar, Eight-string guitar, Ten-string guitar, Eleven-string guitar, Twelve-string guitar, Thirteen-string guitar and doubleneck guitar string guitars also exist....
; George started out on a cello
Cello

The violoncello is a bowed string instrument. A person who plays a cello is called a cellist. The cello is used as a solo instrument, in chamber music, and as a member of the string section of an orchestra....
 then switched to string bass. Foster was twice married: (1) 1912 to Bertha Foster and (2) 1936 to Alma Foster.

Pops Foster was playing professionally by 1907 and worked with Jack Carey
Jack Carey

Jack Carey was a United States trombonist, the leader of the Crescent City Orchestra. The authorship of the famous Tiger Rag tune is attributed to him by some....
, Kid Ory
Kid Ory

Edward "Kid" Ory was a jazz trombone and bandleader. He was born in Woodland Plantation near LaPlace, Louisiana.Ory started playing music with home-made instruments in his childhood, and by his teens was leading a well-regarded band in Southeast Louisiana....
, Armand Piron, King Oliver and other prominent hot bands of the era.

In 1921 he moved to St. Louis
St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri, located near the confluence of the Mississippi River and the Missouri River. St....
 to play with the Charlie Creath
Charlie Creath

Charles Cyril "Charlie" Creath was an American jazz trumpeter, saxophonist, accordionist, and bandleader.Creath played in traveling circuses and in theater bands in the decade of the 1900s, and moved back to St....
 and Dewey Jackson
Dewey Jackson

Dewey Jackson was an American jazz trumpeter and cornetist.Jackson began playing professionally at an early age, with the Odd Fellows Boys' Band , Tommy Evans , and George Reynolds's Keystone Band....
 bands, which would be his base for much of the decade. He also joined Ory in Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles is the largest city in the U.S. state of California and the List of United States cities by population in the United States. Often abbreviated as L.A. and nicknamed The City of Angels, Los Angeles is rated as a beta global city, has an estimated population of 3.8 million and spans over in Southern California....
. He gained the nickname "Pops" because he was far older than any of the other players in the band.

In 1929 Foster moved to New York City
New York City

The City of New York is the List of United States cities by population in the United States, while the New York metropolitan area ranks among the List of urban areas by population....
, where he played with the bands of Luis Russell
Luis Russell

Luis Russell was a jazz pianist and bandleader .Luis Carl Russell was born on Careening Cay, near Bocas del Toro, Panama, in a family of Africa-Caribbean ancestry....
 and Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong

Louis Daniel Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer.Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an innovative cornet and trumpet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence on jazz, shifting the music's focus from collective improvisation to solo performers....
 through 1940. He giged with various New York-based bands through the 1940s, including those of Sidney Bechet
Sidney Bechet

Sidney Bechet was an American jazz saxophone, clarinetist, and composer.He was one of the first important soloists in jazz , and was perhaps the first notable jazz saxophonist of any sort....
, Art Hodes
Art Hodes

Arthur W. Hodes is an American jazz pianist born in Ukraine. His family settled in Chicago, Illinois when he was a few months old. His career began in Chicago clubs, but he did not gain wider attention until moving to New York City in 1938....
, and regular broadcasts on the national "This Is Jazz" radio
Radio

Radio is the transmission of signals, by modulation of electromagnetic radiation with frequency below those of visible light.Electromagnetic radiation radio propagation by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space....
 program.

In the late 1940s he began touring more widely and played in many countries in Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
, especially in France
France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
, and throughout the United States
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
 including returns to New Orleans and California
California

California is a U.S. state on the West Coast of the United States of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. It is bordered by Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east, Arizona to the southeast, and to the south the Mexico state of Baja California....
.

In 1952, Foster toured Europe with Jimmy Archey
Jimmy Archey

Jimmy Archey was an United States jazz trombonist born in Norfolk, Virginia, perhaps most noteworthy for his work in several prominent jazz orchestras and big bands of his time ....
's Band. He played regularly at Central Plaza in New York and briefly in New Orleans with Papa Celestin
Papa Celestin

Oscar "Papa" Celestin was an United States jazz bandleader, trumpeter, cornetist and vocalist....
 in 1954.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he played with Earl Hines
Earl Hines

Earl Kenneth Hines, universally known as Earl "Fatha" Hines, was "one of a small number of pianists whose playing shaped the history of jazz"....
' Small Band. In 1966, he toured Europe with the New Orleans All-Stars but remained based in San Francisco, where he died.

"The Autobiography of Pops Foster" was published in 1971, with a new edition in 2005 ISBN 0-87930-831-1 (alk. paper). The book is not known for great accuracy when some anecdotes are compared to other sources.

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