Biography
Born on 5 April 1922 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, the musician arrived in Chicago during 1941 already proficient on guitar, piano and harmonica. Walter Horton provided instruction on the last of those instruments, after which he performed both on Maxwell Street and alongside Homesick James, Floyd Jones and Moody Jones in a working band. Two singles appeared from him in the mid-1950s; one of them, “Crying The Blues,” captured the depth of his vocal delivery together with the piercing, gliding quality of his harmonica work. Not long afterward he suffered a gunshot wound that left him partly paralyzed. Recovery proceeded gradually, allowing him to continue playing and singing, though public appearances remained infrequent. Floyd Jones claimed that Foster had killed a man and consequently entered a mental hospital early in 1974, yet photographs taken of him in Chicago that September cast doubt on the account. His first album finally reached the public in 1996 under the production of Bobby Mack, who supplied the guitar parts. The case illustrates how an artist of this caliber should never have been forced to reach his later years before receiving recognition.