Exploring America's Classical Music with Ralph Peterson

Ralph Peterson, Jr. (b. May 20, 1962, Pleasantville, New Jersey) is an American jazz drummer and bandleader. Four of Peterson's uncles and his grandfather were all drummers, and Peterson himself began on percussion at age three. He was raised in Atlantic City, where he played trumpet in high school and worked locally in funk groups. He applied to Livingston College, Rutgers, for drums but failed the percussion entrance exam, and enrolled as a trumpeter instead. Peterson emerged in the mid-'80s as co-leader of the high visibility ensemble OTB and as a member of the Harrison- Blanchard Group. Peterson's decade-old Fo'tet is the platform by which he expresses deeply held musical principles. "I believe I was predestined to be a drummer." Raised in a musical family, he first hit the traps at 3. "My early playing was a basement experience. I played with records by James Brown, Earth Wind & Fire and Parliament- Funkadelics, where the beat was powerful and primal. I'd wanted to play since I saw Sonny Payne with the Count Basie Orchestra when I was 13. But my interpretation of Jazz didn't venture very far beyond Maynard Ferguson's Primal Scream until I was out of high school. I'm not a jazz baby. I'm a funk baby who came through the Fusion realm of George Duke and Stanley Clarke. In 1983, he joined Art Blakey's Jazz messengers as the second drummer, playing with him for several years. He worked with Terence Blanchard and Donald Harrison in 1984, and with Walter Davis, Tom Harrell, Out of the Blue, Branford Marsalis, David Murray, Craig Harris, James Spaulding, Roy Hargrove, Jon Faddis, Dewey Redman and Mark Helias, and Wynton Marsalis (with the Count Basie ghost band). In the 1990s, Peterson played as a sideman with Jack Walrath, Craig Handy, Charles Lloyd, Kip Hanrahan, Bheki Mseleku, Courtney Pine, Steve Coleman, George Colligan, Stanley Cowell, Mark Shim,& Betty Carter, Geri Allen,Phil Bowler, Essiet Essiet, Don Byron, Steve Wilson, Melissa Slocum & many more!