Hi everyone,
Just a very quicks heads up to let you know that my YouTube has rebranded as Pete Cater Jazz Drums, and you can find it here
There's all kinds of tuition material on there as well as performance footage from over more than forty years, so subscribe today and I'll see you on the tube.
'One instinctively knows when something is right', or so went the strapline for a popular brand of sherry in the 1970s. A brand of sherry which was, incidentally, favoured by my close to teetotal parents. This abstemiousness is something I have signally failed to inherit, so maybe following the science of DNA isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Anyway, none of that is important other than for the ineluctable fact that on the night of Wednesday October 20th, 2021, at London's famous 100 Club, I instinctively knew that something was right.
The 'something' in question was the Simon Spillett Big Band. A capacity audience took the roof off (so to speak) that legendary Oxford Street music venue. In over forty years playing jazz to UK audiences (and very occasionally beyond) I can only recall a vanishingly small number of occasions when I've experienced such a dramatic audience reaction. Not even enough occasions to half fill the very smallest of hands.
As soon as the gig was over I knew I had to do something, and that something was to set the wheels in motion to record this great music, these fabulous musicians, and to do so to the highest possible standard.
Simon Spillett is a man I consider to be a true kindred spirit in this sometimes rather strange place we call the music industry. Although a fair few years my junior we have much in common. Primarily we are the sons of talented and wildly enthusiastic musicians (Simon, a trombonist, me, a drummer) men who lived to play, if not played to live. In our house (I couldn't presume to speak for Simon) doing the right thing, earning a 9-5 wage and playing on evenings and weekends was the way it was. My young life was only briefly punctuated by interludes when circumstances took my Dad down the full-time musician pathway. I remember him being very happy, if not quite so well off, during this short chapter in the early 1970s.
So, like Simon, I grew up in an environment where the great jazz and big band records of the time were staple fare. Bear in mind that this was a time when big band music was largely contemporary (Buddy, Woody, Kenton, Thad and Mel etc). It was cool music for hip grown ups who were too hip for the hit parade, long before nostalgia became the default position, with middle aged men burping their way through poorly harmonised Miller stocks, and dressing up like the cast of Dad's Army to boot.
Another thing that unites me and Mr S is that in today's industry (certainly our little corner of it) we are, in a manner of speaking, outsiders. Neither one of us experienced the undoubted privilege of a top UK music college education, a sojourn in the ranks of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra back when it was Bill Ashton's personal fiefdom ("Oh hello, are you still playing like Gene Krupa?" not intended as a compliment I hasten to point out) or, certailny beyond my wildest teenage dreams, being packed off to Berklee or somewhere equally exciting. Without access to these pathways you just have to make your own. Do it the hard way, as the song says.
It's been adequately documented elsewhere that my apprenticeship was to say the least circuitous. My trajectory towards the London jazz scene took me to places like Southport, Prestatyn, Weston-Super-Mare, on and off cruse ships, and in and out of provincial pantomime. I made a bit of money, had a lot of fun, and did a few things that not all that many people have had the opportunity to do along the way, but it was a bit like boarding a plane to Islamabad with the hope that you might just get unintentionally rerouted to Los Angeles.
Another thing that I have in common with Simon is a reverence for straight ahead, no nonsense, exciting, swinging jazz, and this soon to be released album we have created together meets all of those criteria.
So anyway, here's this incredible band playing fantastic arrangements,(and believe you me they are) refreshingly unpretentious, truly evocative, listenable, exciting music, which is in no way likely to feature in the repertoire of the Islington Chin Stroking Ensemble (or are they a Collective? I can never remember which). The band spent much of the Summer of 2022 honing this repertoire on the UK festival circuit. It got tighter and tighter with every show. The insanely talented Mark Nightingale restored the charts to a state of pristine playability, and when we got to Scarborough last September I announced to the band what was going to happen "before the great bandleader in the sky calls the eternal intermission" as I put it at the time.
Records like this don't get made cheaply, certainly not if you want the kind of result Simon and I decided to strive for, and a crowdfunding campaign raised roughly a third of the total production costs. We are hugely grateful to all our contributors but special mention must go to Ray Stephens for his massively generous contribution which has brought my break even point forward by a good few months at the very least.
The music on the record, although at least fifty years old (2023 marks the half century since Hayes's untimely passing) is to all intents and purposes brand new, having never been recorded for commercial release until now.
So in April this year it got recorded, and last Saturday, August 19th we added the finishing touches to the production process. I'm not going to go into detail about the recording process or the fabulous performances, both ensemble and soloists, otherwise when you buy the record (as you will) there will be a terrible sense of deja vu when you read the liner notes.
Here's a brief taste, in case you haven't alrerady heard it, not the final mix but you get the idea.
Available to order from www.petecater.org/store from September 6th.
No one has noticed but the title of my blog has changed.
The never knowingly underpunned 'Catering for the Contemporary Drummer' has given way to 'Music and the School of Life', part of the reason is that the new moniker is the working title of a forthcoming book, a book which will explore in significantly greater detail a lot of the ground covered by this blog in its six year existence.
More significant though is the abandonment of the c word.
Contemporary.
There's very little about me that is genuinely contemporary, other than the fact that I am currently alive, and whilst I don't do the ever so slightly absurd thing of dressing in period clothes, sporting 1930s round glasses and playing a set of drums that looks like an impeccably curated museum exhibit, the fact remains that much of who and what I am as a musician is rooted firmly in the past.
That's not to say that I reject innovation and progress, far from it. Back when I was teaching degree students I would take huge interest in their contemporary drum idols, and I would be lying if I said that I hadn't stolen ideas from drummers like Chris Dave, Tony Royster, Nate Smith and a whole lot more besides. The difference is though, any ideas I snag from the cutting edge end up being reimagined in the context of my existing approach to drums and music. I shan't be making what I consider to be a mistake, a mistake that I have seen middle-aged drummers fall prey to in previous generations, including one or two who I very much admired. The mistake consists of tearing down much of what has been built up over a lifetime of playing, this can present in the form of abandoning long established techniques concepts and approaches on the instrument. Another commonly displayed symptom is the drum set itself, which overnight doubles or triples in size. I often see this as a rejection of a previous way of being, as though what had gone before was suddenly no longer good enough.
Architects and town planners did something similar to the centre of Birmingham in the 1960s, and it didn't age well.
Some of the greatest drummers we have ever seen, Steve Gadd and Buddy Rich to name but two, got their identities early on, but continued to innovate and develop (as Gadd still does of course) and there is a consistency as well as strength of identity which is one of the hallmarks of greatness. The big exception to this of course was Tony Williams, whose playing changed so much in the 70s that there is an 'old testament' and a 'new testament' Tony. Both great, but very different. I know which one I favour,
I'm all for a bit of self reinvention, but it should be subtle, and not the main source of attention. Otherwise it's like bad cosmetic surgery, where you notice the facelift rather than the face itself.
So, the bottom line in all this is that there is a very small percentage of what I do as a musician that could be deemed truly contemporary. An ever-increasing amount of what I play could be classed as original, but that's a whole different ball game. This is the seventh decade in which I have been playing drums, so if by this point I was still merely repeating what I have heard elsewhere (which, don't forget, is how you begin to lean to communicate in any language) I think I would be giving myself a pretty stiff talking to.
In short, I am deeply comfortable in my own musical skin. Confidence, along with a good ear, is a quality I feel blessed to have in adequate quantity. If you know where you are, and at the same time know where you are going, take a moment to be thankful, because there are a great many among us who are not quite so fortunate.
Anyway, here's the plug. To mark my 60th year, and 40 years since my big band first took to the stage, I am putting on a couple of special events.
First of which is The Great Drum Show, which is also not contemporary, and will feature tributes to some of the legends of our instrument, and be made up almost entirely of music dating between the 1930s and 1970s. So it's not contemporary, but it isn't pure nostalgia either. Like all the best live shows featuring historic repertoire (of which there is no better example than Simon Spillett's forensic big band investigation of music by and associated with Tubby Hayes) the primary pull factor is the opportunity to hear classic music performed in the moment, in the flesh, with everything that that entails.
There's a try out show in April, details here. After which we'll either go into the West End, or just go west. The likelihood will be somewhere in between these two polar opposites. It's going to be an interesting process trying out and deciding on repertoire, but as I said the other day, you can't beat having things to do.
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I can't think of any better way of starting a new year than having a list of plans you want to achieve.
2023 kicks off with me staring at a formidable list of entirely self imposed targets, and whilst it would be the easy option to go out and do the gigs I choose, go to the gym every day, and make a small supplementary income from the stock market (more to do with dumb luck and intuition as opposed to knowledge and skill I should stress) I just can't resist a new challenge, or two, or three, or four.
Top of the list is producing an album or two in association with my great friend and musical kindred spirit Simon Spillett.
First off is the Tubby Hayes big band project featuring an absolute A-list team of British jazz talent performing scores by and associated with the legendary saxophonist. We are getting close to nai!ing down the studio date and the end result promises to be something very special indeed. It is also my intention to set up a boutique record label in order to release what promises to be a significant work.
But a record label with only one release on its catalogue strikes me as an opportunity missed, so in addition to the big band I'm planning a release featuring Simon's great quartet, the other fifty percent of course being Rob Barron and Alex Dankworth. This group has played together so much post pandemic and is on fire to a point where we might invalidate the buildings insurance in one or two venues!
Predictably, big band music crops up several times on my do list.
As restrictions were lifted post lockdown I was surprised and more than a little flattered to be approached by a leading specialist music agency who were seeking to expand their jazz roster.
Coming up with a new format was the next challenge, but it didn't take all that long as it transpired. Having had so much success between 2007 and 2018 in which period the band performed significantly in excess of a hundred concerts featuring music made famous by the one and only Buddy Rich, I began to think of all those other amazing drummers who were the biggest names in the golden age of big bands and jazz.
Names like Gene Krupa, Louie Bellson, Joe Morello, Shelly Manne, Sonny Payne, Art Blakey, Philly Joe Jones, Tony Williams and so many more. The great music associated with these legends includes repertoire from Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and many more besides.
I might even throw in a little seventies rock and funk. Gadd, Cobham, Garibaldi even some Bonham. Hilarity guaranteed.
So I thought it would be a great idea to pull all this together, and the idea of The Great Drum Show was born. I fully expect that in no time at all we will be embarking on an extended run in the West End, 😁 but to begin with I'm going to be doing a few try out dates. The first of the is at the Arc in Winchester on Saturday April 29th, and you can find more details and a ticket link here.
Also given that 2023 marks the fortieth anniversary of the first outing by the Pete Cater Big Band, I do have a plan for one of two 'autobiographical ' shows revisiting past repertoire, in addition to a few old favourites from those great years with MYJO in the late seventies and early eighties.
Not only that but there are plans for a big band drumming audio educational package, a whole lot of other great gigs with great people and goodness knows what elsr.
OK. Time to stop writing and get on with it.
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