Stuart Foster

Photo of Stuart Foster

Once called the “great­est un­sung singer,” bari­tone Stu­art Fos­ter had a long and dis­tin­guished ca­reer. Though he never achieved any­thing more than a mod­er­ate level of fame, Fos­ter worked with some of the biggest names in the busi­ness and earned the re­spect of crit­ics and col­leagues alike over his thirty years as a vo­cal­ist.

Noth­ing is known of Fos­ter’s early life. He first ap­pears in the his­tor­i­cal record in 1940 when he joined Ina Ray Hut­ton’s new all-​male or­ches­tra, where he re­ceived fea­ture billing. He re­mained with Hut­ton for four years, ap­pear­ing with the group in the 1944 Co­lum­bia film Ever Since Venus. When Hut­ton tem­porar­ily dis­banded in Au­gust 1944, cit­ing a need for rest, Fos­ter joined Guy Lom­bardo’s or­ches­tra, where he had his only chart suc­cess, singing on two of the band’s hit songs, “Al­ways,” which peaked at the num­ber ten spot for one week in Feb­ru­ary 1945, and “Poor Lit­tle Rhode Is­land,” which reached num­ber eleven on the juke­box charts in May 1945. The for­mer was recorded in early No­vem­ber 1944, and the lat­ter on De­cem­ber 1st. Hut­ton an­nounced her re­or­ga­ni­za­tion the fol­low­ing day, and Fos­ter re­turned to her band, where he stayed only briefly. By early March 1945, he’d joined Tommy Dorsey.

At the time Fos­ter joined, Dorsey had been hav­ing trou­ble find­ing and keep­ing male vo­cal­ists. He’d gone through a slew of singers since Skip Nel­son had left in Oc­to­ber 1944, some of them only stay­ing a few days. With Fos­ter, Dorsey found sta­bil­ity. Fos­ter also proved pop­u­lar with the pub­lic dur­ing his time with Dorsey. Hav­ing never placed in any of Down Beat mag­a­zine’s pre­vi­ous reader polls, he earned top hon­ors as best male band vo­cal­ist for 1945 and placed sec­ond in the 1946 poll. The bari­tone stayed with the or­ches­tra until Dorsey dis­banded in No­vem­ber 1946.

After dis­band­ing, Dorsey kept Fos­ter under con­tract de­spite not hav­ing an or­ches­tra. When the band­leader put to­gether a tem­po­rary out­fit the fol­low­ing month for a four-​week en­gage­ment, Fos­ter re­turned. Dorsey also fea­tured Fos­ter as a solo act at the Casino Gar­dens in Los An­ge­les, which Dorsey owned and op­er­ated. When Dorsey per­ma­nently formed a new band in May 1947, Fos­ter once again served as its singer. In Au­gust 1947, Fos­ter was voted best-​liked male vo­cal­ist in Bill­board mag­a­zine’s first an­nual DJ poll. He placed sec­ond in the fol­low­ing year’s poll, swap­ping places with Vaughn Mon­roe, who had been sec­ond the pre­vi­ous year. He ap­peared with the or­ches­tra in the 1947 film The Fab­u­lous Dorseys.

Post-​Band Ca­reer

Fos­ter re­mained with Dorsey until mid-​1948, when he’d left by June to begin a solo ca­reer. He soon found him­self in high de­mand on both the air­waves and in the record­ing stu­dio. Fos­ter worked on sev­eral radio pro­grams, in­clud­ing The Bill Williams Show on WOR in 1949, The Ray­burn and Finch Show on CBS in 1951[1], and Dave Gar­roway’s NBC pro­gram in 1952. Dur­ing the 1950s, he also had his own pro­gram, which first ran on ABC and later on CBS from at least 1952 to 1958. He also ap­peared on Don Mc­Neill’s Break­fast Club in Chicago in 1953 be­fore join­ing Galen Drake’s pro­gram in 1954, which var­i­ously ran on both ABC and CBS through at least 1958. He also sang on Main Street Music Hall on CBS in 1954. In 1950, he ap­peared on the WABD tele­vi­sion pro­gram Once Upon a Tune.[2] He also ap­peared on Drake’s 1957 ABC tele­vi­sion show.

Fos­ter recorded with Hugo Win­ter­hal­ter’s or­ches­tra on MGM in early 1949. Dur­ing the last half of that year, he be­came vo­cal­ist for that label’s house or­ches­tra, led by Russ Case. The group­ing was an at­tempt to mimic Decca’s suc­cess with using Gor­don Jenk­ins to do quick record­ings of pop­u­lar songs that oth­er­wise weren’t being done by the label’s stars. In 1950, Fos­ter recorded with Shep Fields on MGM and Billy But­ter­field’s band on the Lon­don label. He also recorded solo on both the Lon­don and Eastly la­bels that year.

In 1951, Fos­ter recorded sev­eral more times with Win­ter­hal­ter again as well as with Bob Dewey’s or­ches­tra, both on Vic­tor. He also recorded solo on the new indie PAB label and did one side for At­lantic that same year. Fos­ter signed with the Abbey label in early 1952 and again recorded with Win­ter­hal­ter late that year. In 1953, he recorded with Xavier Cugat on Vic­tor and Gor­don Jenk­ins on Decca. In 1954, he recorded for Bell and RCA’s Cam­den label as well as on the Ital­ian Nightin­gale label. Fos­ter sang with the Chap­paqua High School Kids choir on Coral in early 1955 and with both Jenk­ins and Art Mooney later that year. He was back in the stu­dio with Jenk­ins in 1956 and then did solo work on Coral.

1957 saw Fos­ter singing on Cam­den’s low-​priced Hits of '57 album. He went in the stu­dio with the Dick Ja­cobs Or­ches­tra in 1959, on Coral, and sang on the 20th Cen­tury Fox con­cept album Rain in 1960. Every song ei­ther had rain in the title or sug­gested rain. He recorded solo on Ju­bilee in 1960 and Mo­hawk in 1962. He also ap­peared on a spe­cial album of Acad­emy Award win­ning songs put out by Dou­ble­day Books in 1961. Fos­ter’s last record­ing was for the Gold Coin label in 1965.

From the late 1950s on­ward, Fos­ter worked as a staff vo­cal­ist at CBS, often ap­pear­ing on the net­work’s spe­cial pro­grams, singing with their house or­ches­tra. He had no re­grets about not be­com­ing fa­mous. In a 1957 in­ter­view, he said about his ca­reer: “I make a good liv­ing. I live at home with my wife and son, and I don’t have to go on the road. I’m happy the way things are.” In the same in­ter­view, Fos­ter also gave his opin­ion on vo­cal­ists of the rock and roll era: “I feel the music has sunk to a pretty low level. So many of the hit record per­form­ers sim­ply can’t sing—they are off-​key most of the time. The sad part is that they think they’re singing well.”

Fos­ter did go on the road one last time, in 1965 with Skitch Hen­der­son’s or­ches­tra. Stu­art Fos­ter passed away in 1968 at the young age of 49.[3]

Notes

  1. Ray­burn is Gene Ray­burn, more fa­mously known as host of the pop­u­lar 1970s game show Match Game. ↩︎

  2. WABD was then the call sign of cur­rent New York sta­tion WNYW. ↩︎

  3. Some sources list Fos­ter’s death as Feb­ru­ary 8, 1968. Fos­ter, how­ever, passed away on Jan­u­ary 8, as noted by Bill­board mag­a­zine in their Jan­u­ary 20, 1968, issue. The Feb­ru­ary date per­haps can be traced to a Feb­ru­ary 13 col­umn by show busi­ness gos­sip colum­nist Jack O’Brian, who re­lated in­cor­rectly that Fos­ter had died “this week.” ↩︎

Sources

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