Collection: Peter Erskine

Peter Erskine was drumming by age four, attending Stan Kenton's National Stage Band Camps by seven, and on the road with Kenton's orchestra at eighteen. Three years with Kenton, two with Maynard Ferguson, and then in 1978 Jaco Pastorius heard him play at a Ferguson show in Florida and told him he'd be in touch. A few months later, Pastorius recommended Erskine for Weather Report. The appointment surprised people who had written him off as a big band specialist, but Erskine had grown up listening to Miles Davis, the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Weather Report, not big band music, and his four years with the band produced five albums, including the Grammy-winning live double album "8:30" (1979), and established him alongside Pastorius as one of the era's defining rhythm sections in jazz fusion. After leaving Weather Report in 1982 he moved to New York and joined Steps Ahead, working alongside Michael Brecker, Mike Mainieri and Eddie Gomez for five years, while simultaneously launching his own recording career with the self-titled 1982 Contemporary Records debut. He later recorded for ECM with John Abercrombie and built a long-running trio with pianist John Taylor and bassist Palle Danielsson. Since 1994 he has also run his own Fuzzy Music label, taught at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California, appeared on over 700 albums, and been voted Best Jazz Drummer of the Year ten times by Modern Drummer readers. What's stocked here centres on the Weather Report years and his own early solo recordings.