Bicentennial Jazz Plaza

Pops Foster, one of the musicians honored on this plaza, was born George Murphy Foster on May 19, 1892, on a plantation near McCall in Ascension Parish. He began on cello, moved with his family to New Orleans about 1902, and switched to string bass. By 1907 he was playing professionally with bands led by Jack Carey, Kid Ory, Armand Piron and King Oliver. Later he worked in St. Louis, Los Angeles and, from 1929, New York, where he played with Luis Russell and Louis Armstrong through 1940. He died in San Francisco in 1969.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• E. D. White Historic Site — 20 mi
  A National Historic Landmark house of about 1790 on Bayou Lafourche, built by enslaved people and home to two Whites, a governor and a Chief Justice, with an exhibit on the bayou's history.
• Whitney Plantation — 21 mi
  A museum on a former sugar plantation along the River Road that tells its story through the people who were enslaved there, with memorials to 107,000 enslaved Louisianans and 2,200 children.
• LSU Rural Life Museum — 23 mi
  Four slave cabins moved from Welham Plantation and a working-plantation row of more than twenty saved buildings, on land the Burden family held as Windrush plantation since the 1830s.
• Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center — 23 mi
  A Jean Lafitte National Historical Park center on Bayou Lafourche with Acadian and bayou-life exhibits, a 200-seat theater and ranger-guided boat tours to the E. D. White house.

More markers nearby

• All Roads Lead to Donaldsonville — steps away
• African American Life — steps away
• The Culture — steps away
• The Swamp — steps away