Foster - Hitman: forty years making music, topping charts, & winning Grammys

On a stifling summer day in 1990, I made the long drive from my recording studio in Malibu to Glendale, in the San Fernando Valley. I pulled up in front of a drab building that looked about as impressive as a sheet-metal shop, parked on the street, and approached the unprepossessing entrance. It must have been about ninety degrees out, but it was nice and cool indoors. I signed in at the security desk and took the stairs to the second floor, where an older guy was waiting for me. You the fella thats here about the Nat King Cole recordings? he asked.

That would be me, I said.

He turned and made his way down the corridor, and I followed him through a door and into a huge, musty vault that was stacked with ancient tapes. Most of them were in identical metal cases, piled eight and ten deep in places, and I could make out a number of familiar names on some of the fraying labels: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peggy Lee, Tony Bennett, Perry Como

We went deeper into the vault. The place looked like that endless government warehouse in the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the Ark itselfsafe inside a sturdy wooden crateis wheeled to its final resting place among tens of thousands of similar crates.

Let me think, the old man said, shuffling along and mumbling to himself. Im pretty sure I know where it is. He slowed suddenly and I almost bumped into him. Should be right in this here area somewhere, he said, craning his neck, and I thought he was going to tip over backward. Yup. There it is.

It was on the second shelf from the top. He reached up and grabbed it and blew the dust off the case, and for a moment a cloud hung in the air between us. He then turned abruptly and I followed him back outside, to the end of the corridor and into a tiny, airless room. He transferred the recording onto a twenty-four-track tape and gave me the copy. I signed for it and thanked him and found my way back into the blazing sunlight, and I climbed into my car for the long return drive to the studio.

I wasnt in a great mood, and I wasnt feeling particularly optimistic about the work that lay ahead. For some time now, Id been in a bit of a slump, and absolutely nothing was clicking. In previous years, it felt like every single time I wrote a song or produced a song I had a chance at a home run, but that wasnt happening anymore. I wasnt in the Top 40 at the time, and life in the music business is measured by your position on the charts. It was grim. No matter what I did, I couldnt pop the charts. Id lost my edge, my hungerwhatever the hell you call it.

And its strange, because over the years, every time I made an album, there was always a point where I would think, This ones no good. This ones not going to happen. And I was wrong, of course. Most of my albums had done very well, and some of them had done spectacularlythere were five Grammys sitting on my pianobut where was Number Six? My sound had stopped working. I began to wonder whether my career was in the shitter.

Instead of trying to figure out what was wrong, however, to try to fix it, I ran away. I was taking stuff not because it had merit but to keep myself busy, and I was keeping busy because I was trying not to think about the problem. I should have probably gone into therapy, but I didnt want to dig too deep for fear of what Id find.

This next job seemed unpromising in the extreme: Natalie Cole wanted to sing some classic recordings by her late father, Nat King Cole, to create a string of old standards. But for whom? Did anyone still care about that stuff? The more I thought about it, however, the more it seemed that it might be a good thing for me. This wasnt the type of stuff the radio stations were ever going to play, and at the end of the day thats precisely why I took the job: Because I didnt feel any real pressure to succeed. I hadnt been near the