Aloysius Tyrone Foster was born January 18, 1943, in Richmond, Virginia, and grew up in Harlem, New York, first introduced to jazz by his father, an amateur bassist. His professional career began in the mid-1960s, playing and recording with hard bop and swing musicians including Blue Mitchell and Illinois Jacquet.

Miles Davis first heard Foster play live in 1972 at the Cellar Club on 95th Street in Manhattan, and later recalled, "He knocked me out because he had such a groove and he would just lay it right in there." With the departure of Jack DeJohnette, Foster became Davis's main drummer, appearing on boundary-pushing fusion albums including 1974's Big Fun, 1975's Agharta, and 1976's Pangaea. He was a member of the Miles Davis band for thirteen years across two distinct periods of Davis's career, the only musician to do so.

Foster performed and recorded extensively with Joe Henderson, whose own career is covered in full in his JazzProfiles.com profile, Freddie Hubbard, McCoy Tyner, Wayne Shorter, whose own career is covered in full in his JazzProfiles.com profile, Bobby Hutcherson, John Scofield, whose own career is covered in full in his JazzProfiles.com profile, Pat Metheny, whose own career is covered in full in his JazzProfiles.com profile, and Charlie Haden, whose own career is covered in full in his JazzProfiles.com profile. Though he recorded only a handful of albums as a leader, including 1978's Mixed Roots and 2019's Inspirations & Dedications, he led his own groups regularly and was widely respected as a bandleader.

Foster died May 28, 2025, at age 82.

Foster's groove-centered drumming, praised directly by Miles Davis for how naturally it locked into a pocket, made him one of the defining drummers of Davis's 1970s electric period, and his subsequent decades of work across the post-bop mainstream established him as one of the most trusted and widely recorded drummers of his generation.