Department of Music

Eric Slaughter

Eric teaches private applied jazz guitar and directs the Guitar Ensemble. A first-call guitarist in the St. Louis region, he is recognized for his work in jazz alongside a wide range of blues, soul, and commercial styles, and he brings to the studio a full-time professional performing career built over a lifetime on the bandstand.

Born into a musical family in his native St. Louis, Eric was a self-taught pianist from the age of three before switching to guitar at fourteen. He studied at the University of Michigan before turning fully to music at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where classes and performances around the city exposed him to musicians from across the globe. Returning to St. Louis, he began recording and performing with regional legends including saxophonists Oliver Sain and Willie Akins and vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Hugh “Peanuts” Whalum. A national tour with blues vocalist and producer Willie Clayton later took him out of town, and between tours he worked as a studio session musician for Ace Records in Jackson, Mississippi. A desire to get closer to the roots of jazz, and a chance meeting with vocalist and trumpeter Jeremy Davenport, drew him to New Orleans, where, under the mentorship of trumpeter Wendell Brunious, saxophonist Donald Harrison, drummer Shannon Powell, and others, he immersed himself in the music and history of the Crescent City. He went on to spend three years in New York City, continuing to perform, record, and grow as an artist.

Eric's career has brought him to the stage and studio alongside artists from across the musical map: jazz figures such as David Sanborn, Houston Person, Donald Harrison, Russell Gunn, Maurice Brown, Ronnie Burrage, Erin Bode, and Dave Weckl, and blues, soul, and R&B artists including Ike Turner, Little Milton, The O'Jays, Tyrone Davis, and Eric Roberson. He has appeared at festivals including the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the French Quarter Festival, the Chicago Blues Festival, and the Martinique Jazz Festival, and has headlined at Jazz St. Louis. His recordings include Donald Harrison's Electric Band 3D, Willie Akins's The St. Louis Connection, Ronnie Burrage's Heal, and the Smithsonian Institution's Mississippi: River of Song.

A widely traveled musician and educator, Eric has lived and worked abroad in Kathmandu, Quito, San José, and Buenos Aires, and is fluent in Spanish with intermediate Portuguese. His international experience spans faculty development at the Kathmandu Jazz Conservatory in Nepal and instruction at the International Jazz Workshop in Innsbruck, Austria, and it strongly informs his musicianship, stylistic fluency, and teaching. He succeeds the late Professor Emeritus Rick Haydon, bringing to SIUE students a depth of professional experience, stylistic versatility, and firsthand knowledge of the music industry across diverse performance and career paths.