One sold life insurance. The other was a CIA agent. But that was a lifetime ago.
Tonight, it's all about the music, as Frank Guldseth (our former "spook") and his Tucson Swings orchestra bring out the best of the big-band tunes, with Anthony Foster (our former insurance man) conducting.
Foster, by the way, turned 98 two days before this February standing-room-only gig at Fellowship Square, an east-side senior housing complex.
Judging by the action out on the dance floor, Foster's not the only one defying the odds.
"We are always here for this band," says Carmen Winders, 86, taking a brief break from the dance floor with her husband, Earl, 88. "We appreciate Anthony bringing the band here."
Yes, indeedy.
When Foster, a retired orchestra leader, moved from Florida to Fellowship Square in 2005, he was still hauling around his love of music.
People are also reading…
"We would have little things here, a singer or a trio. I would see all those little old people tapping their toes, snapping their fingers. They were starved for my kind of music."
After catching Tucson Swings in a performance, he called up Guldseth with a little proposition: Could Guldseth bring his band to Fellowship Square? And, oh, by the way, could Foster lead it? That was fine with Guldseth, 71, who plays saxophone and clarinet. "I don't really lead the band anyway," he says.
Since then, the band, with Foster wielding the baton, has played five times at Fellowship Square, all on Foster's dime. "Anthony bankrolls this," says Guldseth.
"I can't go anywhere anymore. The money I would spend on a cruise, I hire Frank and put on a program," says Foster, who sports a snazzy black tux and red bow tie while conducting.
Born Feb. 19, 1912 - or, as he likes to point out, two months before the sinking of the Titanic - Foster grew up in upstate New York.
By 18, he was leading his own orchestra, at one time called Sir Anthony and his Aristocrats. But in 1933, he disbanded the orchestra to enroll at Juilliard, taking classes in arranging and conducting.
Before long, he was back in front of the band, now called Anthony Tosca and his New Yorkers, after his idol, Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini. "It was a 17-piece orchestra, but it was popular music - Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman."
Gigs ranged from the Waldorf Astoria and Roseland in New York City to Frank Dailey's Meadowbrook in New Jersey.
He also played RKO's vaudeville circuit in New York City from '36 to '39.
After a stint in the Army Air Forces during World War II, Foster, by then a husband and father, put away the music and became an insurance agent with New York Life, first in New York and then in Florida, where he moved in 1963.
He retired in 1985, only to start up yet another big-band orchestra five years later in Boca Raton. He was two years away from 80.
Known as the Anthony Foster Society Orchestra, it played about 25 engagements a year, mainly in country clubs and hotels. His last gig in Florida was on his 92nd birthday, in February of 2004.
After his second wife died the following year, Foster came to Tucson, where a daughter lives.
Meanwhile, Guldseth had joined the CIA straight from college. "There was some cloak-and-dagger work, but not all," he says.
Once a member of the University of Washington marching band, Guldseth had landed a number of bar gigs during his college days, as well as working in the World's Fair Band in Seattle in 1962. That would lead to an appearance in the Elvis Presley flick "It Happened at the World's Fair."
Even with the CIA, Guldseth kept his clarinet handy on assignments that took him from Venezuela to Greece and Turkey.
"I traveled with clarinet in hand and played whenever possible," says Guldseth, who entertained Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie as part of a jazz quartet that "included an Armenian, a Frenchman and a Brit."
After retiring in 1990, he formed the new Columbia Swing Orchestra in Washington, D.C., playing everywhere from the Russian Embassy to one of Bill Clinton's inaugural balls.
His orchestra also played at the 50th anniversary party for the CIA, "hidden away in a huge tent on the agency's grounds, with director George Tenet leading the spies in a rousing covert conga line."
In 2004, he sold the orchestra and moved to Tucson with wife, Beth, an ardent birder aiming to retire here.
Later that same year, he organized Tucson Swings. "I look forward to more years of 'retirement,' " says Guldseth.
So does Foster. Grinning ear to ear at the dancers below him, he promises, "I'll be here next year."
Bonnie Henry's column appears Sundays and Mondays. Reach her at 573-4179 or at bhenry@azstarnet.com - or write to 4850 S. Park Ave., Tucson, AZ 85714.
