Peter Erskine – A Genius Drummer Of Jazz Fusion

Victor Rouă0 comment

Peter Erksine is a legendary jazz and jazz fusion drummer, best known for playing with the legendary jazz fusion band Weather Report during the late 1970s and early 1980s (in a golden line-up which also included the illustrious and highly influential bassist Jaco Pastorius) and then once more during the late 1980s, appearing on four studio albums of the band as follows: Mr. Gone (1978), Night Passage (1980), Weather Report (1982), and, finally, This is This! (1986), the last studio album of the band. In addition, Peter Erskine’s outstanding drumming contributions are also featured on the live albums Live and Unreleased from 2002 as well as The Legendary Live Tapes: 1978–1981 from 2015.

Peter Erskine performing live on Zildjian drum set with the U.S. Air Force Band Airmen of Note at a Jazz Heritage Series concert in Alexandria, Virginia on 23 March 2017. He won two Grammy Awards as well as the Best Jazz Drummer of the Year award by the readers of the Modern Drummer magazine 10 times. He has a very long experience as a drummer, starting to perform on drums at age 4. The autor of the photograph is Senior Airman Jordyn Fetter. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Peter Erskine is the longest-serving drummer of the band, being active in the jazz fusion group Weather Report initially from 1978 to 1982 and then once more from 1986 to 1987. Aside from playing drums in Weather Report, Peter Erskine also contributed vocals on track/song 1 of the studio album Mr. Gone (from 1978, the one which received an undeservingly-low rating from DownBeat magazine), namely ‘The Pursuit of the Woman with the Feathered Hat’ (composed by Josef ‘Joe’ Erich Zawinul) as well as played on claves on the 1982 eponymous studio album of the band (he is also credited for drum computer contributions on the respective record/LP). Apart from playing with Weather Report, Peter Erskine was also a member of another jazz fusion band, namely Steps Ahead. He started to become a professional musician in 1972 when he became a member of the Stan Kenton Orchestra. He spent four years with Stan Kenton and then he joined Maynard Ferguson for two years, before eventually becoming a member of Weather Report in 1978 (being endorsed by Jaco Pastorius who saw him performing in a jazz club previously).

Peter Erskine has been prolific not only in the field of music (in which he certainly played in a league of his own with the giants of the jazz fusion genre), but also in literary and academic regards, having published several books on drumming and being a professor at the USC Thornton School of Music, a private music school in Los Angeles (whose parent institution of higher education is the University of Southern California). During his time with Weather Report, his qualities were speed, tenacity, great technique, and fine synchronisation with the rest of his bandmates, particularly in the rhythm section of the band with none other than legendary bassist Jaco Pastorius himself (and an overall mastery of both drums and percussion).

The musical legacy of Peter Erskine is a precious and notable one in the genre of jazz fusion and beyond the confines of just jazz and jazz fusion, being therefore important in music history in general. He won an Honorary Doctorate from the Berklee School of Music in 1992.

P.S. Among the books penned by Peter Erskine is also a very interesting title documenting the history of Weather Report, namely No Beethoven: An Autobiography & Chronicle of Weather Report. You can discover more on it by the maestro himself below:

Documentation sources and external links:

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