Pete Cater is a celebrated British jazz drummer whose five-decade career has been defined by virtuosity, creativity, and a commitment to the legacy of big band music. As the driving force behind The Great Drum Show and founder of Mister PC Records, Cater is championing a bold new chapter for UK jazz. In this interview, he shares the story behind his latest projects — including a return to Abbey Road — and an ambitious crowdfunding initiative launching this month. Supporters can get involved in shaping British jazz history by pre-ordering releases, becoming executive producers, or even hosting exclusive private concerts. Whether you’re a lifelong jazz fan or simply curious, Pete’s passion and vision offer an inspiring glimpse into the world of independent music-making.

What sparked the idea for The Great Drum Show?

I’ve been playing big band music for close to fifty years. It’s one of the most challenging and exciting genres for a drummer. You can play ten different genres on a big band gig, that’s how wide ranging it is. I’ve put together several big bands of my own down the years, first at the age of nineteen. I’ve had quite a bit of success along the way too; having released three acclaimed albums and topped polls on more than one occasion. As well as several BBC broadcasts and an appearance on ITV alongside Ronnie Corbett and Miranda Hart. Anyway, as lockdown was coming to a close I was contacted by a guy I know who was working as a freelance talent booker for a specialist music agency. The agency was looking at the prospect of taking on more jazz artists and they were keen to work with me.

In the decade or more prior to covid we had had great success with a concert package that recreated the big band music of one of my all-time drummer heroes, Buddy Rich. That show had played over a hundred concerts over the years and had been hugely successful. Having said that I felt the audiences were beginning to dwindle and that it was too much of a niche market to be playing such specialised repertoire that only a hard core of fans know. Anyway, on my travels visiting various music venues around the UK I kept seeing advertising for shows with titles like ‘The Greatest Classic Rock Guitar Solos Ever’, and such like. So I decided to borrow the idea, reverse engineer it and remodel it in my own image, celebrating a whole load of legendary drumming heroes who were and are such pivotal influences upon me as a musician.

Not only that, it’s nice for the drums to be featured. Back in the heyday of the big swing bands the drummers were big stars and the drum solo was the highpoint of the night’s performance. With the advent of rock everything changed and the drums got shoved to the back of the stage, in between the guitar amps. There were a number of legendary rock drummers who were very able soloists, though invariably their solos would go on too long, but largely the role of the drummer in that kind of music is to supply a totally solid, often deceptively simple foundation. The scope for improvisation and creativity is much more restricted,

The show gives me the chance to play a huge range of great music with a team of top drawer British musicians, and the more concert dates we can secure, the happier I will be.

Why return to Abbey Road now?

I first recorded at Abbey Road twenty five years ago. The second big band album I did entitled ‘Upswing’ was done in studio number two, the room made famous by the Beatles of course. I’ve recorded there many times subsequently and everything I have ever done there has been a bit special. There’s a little bit of magic in that room.

What pushed you to launch your own label?

I hadn’t planned it. After lockdown I was in a position to pick and choose what gigs I wanted to do as the industry slowly began to return to its feet. I had reconnected with my old friend and colleague, the saxophonist Simon Spillett, who asked me to join his quartet. Simon is one of the most prominent jazz tenor saxophonists on the UK scene right now, so I jumped at the chance.

Shortly thereafter Simon began talking about a big band project that he had attempted to launch right before lockdown. The band is dedicated to playing music associated with or written by the British jazz legend Tubby Hayes, and the response from the public after the first couple of gigs in late 2021 was incredible. All through 2022 that band travelled around the UK playing jazz clubs and festivals to rapturous receptions but there was no interest from the wider music industry. You would have thought labels might have been queuing up to record us, but since they demonstrably were not I took it upon myself to make it happen, and Mister PC Records was born. Simon’s big band album ‘Dear Tubby H’ is out on CD, limited edition double vinyl, and digital, and it received the almost unprecedented five star review from Jazzwise magazine, which felt like a good way to start We’ve also showcased Simon with his quartet on a live session at the Pizza Express Jazz Club in Soho. In post-production at the moment is a session by alto saxophonist Sammy Mayne, as well as a project of my own, and the upcoming sessions at Abbey Road will result in a follow up big band album by Simon as well as the ‘cast recording’ ‘The Great Drum Show’, plus some other material that I’m really excited to be recording.

What’s the goal of your new crowdfunding campaign?

It’s to fund these two new records. The opportunity to have an affiliation with Abbey Road came out of the blue, and we had to forge ahead with very specific recording dates in order to work with them. That means I’ll have a lot of musicians to pay, and this is why crowd funding can really help. All too often where small independent jazz recordings are concerned, the musicians are paid next to nothing, sometimes literally nothing. There’s a whole structure of ‘mate’s rates’ which says a lot about the musicians themselves. Such is their integrity and desire to see creative work become a reality that being properly paid isn’t a priority. At Mister PC Records we do things a bit differently. Whether you are a band leader, band member, or session musician we pay just as much for a recording session as you get if you were working for a household name pop star, playing on a movie soundtrack, or any other commercial recording. I don’t see why jazz artists shouldn’t be properly remunerated for their artistry. The net result of which is that two days of recording will leave me with a five figure wage bill. So if crowdfunding, the large part of which is to invite people to order records before they actually get made, helps me with cash flow then I’m a happy man.

Another important consideration is, I believe, private finance funding the arts. From someone pledging £15 for a soon to be released CD, right up to multi million pound corporate sponsorships. I think it’s really important that we have alternatives to arts funding that comes from general taxation, as well as which we need far more attractive tax incentives for private investors to support the arts.

Latterly the application for publicly funded grants has become close to impossible for a lot of individuals and grass roots organisations. I sometimes think that the powers that be are actively seeking to dissuade people from applying if they don’t tick certain boxes. Sports sponsorship is hugely effective, and we ought to be taking the lead from that sector, and yes, I will put your company logo on the front of my bass drum!

How did it feel being the only non-American in Rhythm’s top 5?

2015 was quite the year; one of my best ever. Key to this was a concert at Cadogan Hall in Chelsea marking the twentieth anniversary of my band. A great friend of mine promoted the gig and really did a great job in securing publicity. This included me writing some articles about the big band drumming style and doing some instructional videos. Both of these really enhanced my global profile and as a result I received a nomination in the jazz category of Rhythm magazine’s readers’ poll, and the readers were kind enough to vote in sufficient numbers that I finished fifth. It was quite a proud moment being the only non-American nominee in the jazz category, since jazz is an American art form that the rest of the world has borrowed. To be considered good enough to be ranked alongside these global icons was, and is, proper bucket list stuff.

How has your playing changed since you started?

Well hopefully it has improved! Drums and jazz music have never not been a part of my life. Right from day one Dave Brubeck Quartet records were playing at home, along with a lot of other music, so purely by osmosis I was absorbing the language from the very beginning. Because my Dad was a drummer, and a very good one at that, the house was full of drums, drumsticks, books and magazines about drums and music in general. That made for a very fertile environment for me to pick up and absorb information under my own steam. I’m hugely lucky to have grown up in an environment like that.

Like so many others before and since I started learning the language of music by repeating simple musical phrases that I heard. Just like learning any kind of language you develop a vocabulary which is the means by which you communicate. Almost every drummer repeats things that have been played before almost all of the time. That’s perfectly normal and understandable and it’s exactly what I did until I was in my early thirties, at which time I started to develop a whole load of drum techniques and concepts that are entirely my own. Whilst much of what we do merely requires repetition of what went before, to be able to express myself on the instrument with ideas that started as a blank sheet of paper feels like the ultimate achievement. Some of my best ideas I included in a self-published book that came out just before lockdown. That was good timing as the income stream really helped during that period. Also during lockdown I was able to invest a lot of downtime in playing through what I had written in the book, only to find there was way more to what I had written than I had initially realised.

To this day I try to play for a couple of hours every day, the vast majority of which is spent on new ideas, creativity, improvisation, that sort of thing. Obviously I have to balance that with maintaining ‘match fitness’ for upcoming gigs as well as preparing repertoire.

Which drummer shaped your style the most?

It would have to be my Dad. All because of the good fortune to be the son of a jazz loving drummer, I am who I am. That apart his two favourite drummers when I was young were Joe Morello and Buddy Rich. When it comes to virtuoso drum technique they don’t come any better, and that really set the bar for me. I was so young, absorbing everything I heard, and my young life hadn’t been tainted by the negativity of limited ambition. I heard those two players, and many more subsequently, and my idealistic young mind decided that if they could do it, so could I. It’s important to aim high and to manage your expectations, but not in the way people necessarily use that expression. My autodidactic journey has taken me to some interesting places, and I have drafted a book based on these experiences, but more of a performers’ self-help manual than a memoir.

What’s been the toughest part of post-COVID recovery?

Scheduling. Once everything restarted everyone was trying to rearrange cancelled events, more often than not on the same night. It was actually really positive to see such interest in all those reinstated live events, and it really felt for a while that people were really appreciative of what they had lost during that awful, ludicrous period. It feels like normality has been back in place for a while now, but gig attendances and enthusiasm seem to have elevated to unprecedented levels. I do hope we can keep that momentum.

What do you look for in artists you sign?

Every artist is different and I do set a lot of store by hunches and intuition: sometimes you just get a feeling about an artist or band. I do have a wish list of people with whom I’d like to collaborate, and obviously there are practical considerations. The one thing that isn’t negotiable is ability. Musicianship is a bit forgotten these days. When I was young you would see bands on television the whole time: not just music shows. Talk shows, news programmes, variety shows and so on were all full of musicians playing instruments, and anything I can do to help shine a light on great instrumental ability makes me want to produce records.

New artists should display and acknowledge the history and evolution of the art of jazz over more than a century. That’s not to say that I’m only interested in retro, old school players. Far from it, but I need to know that you know about what went before, and I can hear that in what a musician plays, and the way in which they play it. Then there’s all the boring stuff like having a strong social media presence and working hard to get an audience to turn up to your gigs. Artists who display at least some degree of entrepreneurial flair will be the best signings.

One piece of advice for young jazz drummers?

I’ve done all kinds of educational stuff throughout my career, and my advice to all aspiring professional players is the same. Be whatever kind of drummer the industry wants you to be. Now, whilst I am very much not an advocate of conformity I think it’s sensible for young players to keep an eye on the musician marketplace and to have a feel for which way the wind is blowing. As a kid in the 80s in the West Midlands I was into big bands and straight ahead jazz. There was no plausible career path in that corner of the industry, and eventually it dawned on me that to make it as a freelance player I needed to broaden my stylistic range. I always kept jazz on the back burner though; it was never not there. I played a long game which resulted in my forming my London based big band in 1995, and that side hustle would turn out to be the thing that would make my name. So to all the aspiring players out there, develop the broadest possible stylistic range on your instrument, play every opportunity that comes along, keep those personal projects simmering in the background, and never lose sight of what inspired you to learn to play in the first place.

Pete Cater invites you to get involved in a major new crowdfunding initiative launching this month. Making these exciting new records — including The Great Drum Show and the next Simon Spillett Big Band release — is a significant financial undertaking, and your support can make all the difference. Whether you’d like to pre-order advance copies, be credited as an executive producer (with your name and logo on the cover), or even host a private concert for 100 guests with champagne, canapés, and live music from an A-list British jazz big band, there are countless ways to be part of UK jazz history. Formal investment partnerships are also welcome — simply email petecaterdrums@gmail.com to start the conversation. And if you’d like to support the scene more simply, the ‘DONATE’ button on Pete’s website ensures that every contribution, no matter how small, helps foster new jazz work in the UK.