TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Dr. William P. Foster, credited with innovating a much-imitated high-stepping style as founder and longtime director of the Florida A&M Marching 100 band, died Saturday. He was 91.
Foster died in Tallahassee, university officials said. They did not release a cause of death.
Foster served as the marching band’s director from 1946 until his retirement in 1998. He created more than 200 half-time pageants for the band at the historically Black university.
He is credited with innovating marching band techniques, including a high-stepping style imitated by high school and college bands nationwide.
A 1991 article in USA Today called the Marching 100 “probably the best known college marching band in the USA,” and a 1989 New York Times piece called them “perhaps the most imitated of marching bands.”
“There’s a psychology to running a band,” Foster told The New York Times in 1989. “People want to hear the songs they hear on the radio; it gives them an immediate relationship with you. And then there’s the energy. Lots of energy in playing and marching. Dazzle them with it. Energy.”
In 1989, the French chose the Marching 100 to represent the United States in the Bastille Day Parade in Paris, celebrating the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution. Instead of traditional marching band music, the band marched—and danced—to songs by James Brown.
“They illustrate American music to me, which is to say the best of Black music,” the parade’s artistic director, Jean-Paul Goude, told The New York Times. “Some things have never been exposed to the Parisian people, and this is more exciting than some pop star seen on MTV.”
Over the years, members of the Marching 100 have played at Super Bowls, the Olympics, the Grammy Awards and the inaugurations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
The Marching 100 won the Sudler Intercollegiate Marching Band Trophy in 1985, and, in 1992, Sports Illustrated declared them the best marching band in the country.
The band has grown to more than 400 members, who wear green and orange uniforms. Many go on to careers as band directors and professional performers. One of the best known was jazz alto saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderley.
“As a visionary leader, (Foster) built America’s greatest band by departing from the standard routines and maneuvers to showcase band pageantry,” said FAMU President James H. Ammons.
Foster graduated from the University of Kansas in 1941, earned his master’s degree from Wayne State University in 1950 and received his doctorate from Teachers College at Columbia University in 1955.
He wrote two books, Band Pageantry: A Guide for the Marching Band and The Man Behind the Baton.
Foster was born in Kansas City, Kansas, on Aug. 25, 1919. He began his music career by learning to play the clarinet at age 12.
