Being a weeklie podcaste from Madison, Wisconsin featuring several remarkable curiosities therein occurring being a compendium of live music from divers artistes
Show #150: In Memory of Oscar Peterson
January 22nd, 2008
Just before last Christmas, jazz legend Oscar Peterson passed away. And so this week’s show is dedicated to him. (OK, technically this is last week’s show as it’s been up for days. However, I’m only making a post now.)
(Photo by Paul Hoeffler.)
My ignorance of Oscar Peterson far exceeds my knowledge of him and his life. I know of him, of course, and heard his music back when I was able to listen to the morning jazz shows on WORT. But only now am I getting to know of his life and place in jazz history. For instance, I didn’t know that he was Canadian. Here’s a bit on his childhood from his official bio:
At 14 years of age, Oscar’s older sister Daisy got him to audition for a CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) national amateur contest which he went on to win. This opened the doors to performances on a weekly broadcast show, on a Montreal radio station, called Fifteen Minutes’ Piano Rambling and later performances on a national CBC broadcast called The Happy Gang. Finally, when algebra couldn’t banish musical arrangements, Oscar asked to drop out of high school. His father told him that he couldn’t “let him leave high school to be a jazz piano player. You have to be the best, there is no second best.”
A slightly more thorough biography of Peterson can be found at Wikipedia. Here are some highlights of Peterson’s career:
In the course of his career, Peterson developed a reputation as a technically brilliant and melodically inventive jazz pianist, and became a regular on Canadian radio from the 1940s. His name was already recognized in the United States…Through Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic he was able to play with the major jazz artists of the time…From the late 1950s, when Peterson gained worldwide recognition as one of the leading pianists in jazz, he played in a variety of settings: solo, duo, trio, quartet, small bands, and big bands. However, his solo piano recitals, as well as his solo piano recordings were rare, until he chose to make a series of solo albums titled “Exclusively for my friends.”
(Photo found here.)
Alright, I’ll quit blathering on a topic about which I know very little. Instead, onto the music.
This is a great soundboard recording of the Oscar Peterson Trio. It was recorded at Gürzenich in Cologne, Germany on 19 November 1970. Line-up:
Oscar Peterson – piano
Jiri Mraz – bass
Ray Price – drums
Setlist:
The Lamp Is Low
By the Time I Get to Phoenix
Triste
Somewhere
Untitled
Let’s Fall in Love
On a Clear Day
Hamp’s Blues
From YouTube comes this clip featuring Peterson with Keith Emerson of ELP. They’re playing “Honky Tonk Train Blues”. The contrast between their styles is quite dramatic and, as one commenter noted, Emerson has no swing.
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