The Greatest Of Oscar Peterson: Classics From The Legendary Jazz Pianist

From Rely Basie’s plinky minimalism to bebopper Bud Powell’s high-velocity fusillades and the luxurious romantic reveries of Invoice Evans, the pages of jazz historical past include a mess of influential piano gamers who cultivated a particular sound. However no checklist of traditionally necessary jazz pianists could be full with out the mighty Oscar Peterson, a formidable Canadian musician who when it comes to sheer method set an impossibly excessive bar that few may match.

An early disciple of the jazz piano trio format pioneered by his idol Nat King Cole, Peterson blended ultra-speedy fingerwork with components from blues, classical music, ragtime, swing, and boogie-woogie to create an unmistakable signature model. Thought-about by many to be Canada’s biggest musical export, he loved a protracted and storied profession that produced over 200 albums, earned eight Grammy Awards, and accrued a sackful of different accolades, together with France’s prestigious Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Navigating Peterson’s monumental discography isn’t any straightforward feat, even for the virtuosic pianist’s most ardent and educated followers. So, to save lots of you from that difficult activity, we’ve chosen a number of basic tracks that we hope will encourage a deeper investigation of his again catalog. From bluesy ballads and high-octane swingers to groovy bossa novas and slick pop makeovers, the most effective Oscar Peterson tracks encapsulate the distinctive artistry of a musician who may take any tune and rework it right into a compelling keyboard symphony.

Hearken to the most effective of Oscar Peterson now.

From piano prodigy to jazz famous person

Oscar Peterson was born in Montreal, Canada, in 1925 to folks of West Indian heritage. Inspired by his father, a self-taught beginner musician, Peterson was 5 when he started his musical journey, enjoying the trumpet and the piano. After a bout of tuberculosis at seven years outdated, he dropped the trumpet, focusing solely on the piano. Thought-about a pure prodigy, he practiced furiously and rapidly excelled. Such was his expertise that he was taken below the wing of Paul de Marky, a Hungarian-born pianist who had been a scholar of István Thomán, a former pupil of the nice classical music pianist and composer Franz Liszt. Whereas he blossomed as a classical pianist, Peterson additionally cultivated a love of ragtime, jazz, and boogie-woogie music, incomes him an early nickname: “Brown Bomber of the Boogie-Woogie.”

Fame got here calling at fourteen when Peterson gained a nationwide competitors hosted by the Canadian Broadcasting Company, which earned him a weekly fifteen-minute radio slot. His early success led him to stop highschool and start knowledgeable profession in earnest. He joined trumpeter Johnny Holmes’ Orchestra for a number of years earlier than forming a trio in 1945 which reduce a number of boogie-woogie-style sides for RCA Victor Data. Within the late 40s, Peterson started to get observed, particularly by American musicians visiting Canada, like Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie, who have been impressed by the younger pianist’s formidable musicianship and technical mastery.

Norman Granz’s affect

In 1949, Peterson appeared on the radar of jazz file producer and impresario Norman Granz, the mastermind behind the vastly profitable Jazz At The Philharmonic (JATP) live shows that helped popularize fashionable jazz. Throughout a visit to Montreal to prepare a JATP occasion, Granz was touring to the airport in a cab when he heard an intriguing piano participant on the radio. Studying it was a reside broadcast from a jazz membership within the metropolis, he urged the cab driver to take him there, the place he found the pianist was Oscar Peterson. After the present, he supplied the 24-year-old a slot in a forthcoming JATP live performance in New York. Peterson accepted and made his US debut as a “surprise guest” at a packed Carnegie Corridor performing alongside Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, and Coleman Hawkins, the place Granz launched him to the viewers as “one of the coming giants of jazz.”

From that time, Peterson grew to become a JATP stalwart. Underneath Granz’s mentorship and astute administration, he rapidly flourished, signing to the producer’s Clef label in 1950, the place he reduce a string of albums earlier than following the producer to Verve Data, based in 1956. At Verve, Peterson grew to become a family identify, dwelling as much as Granz’s prophecy that he would turn into a jazz big. Though a stroke in 1993 at age 68 proved a serious setback to his profession, Peterson finally recovered, and performed and recorded till he died at 82 in 2007.

The signature numbers

No Peterson live performance could be full and not using a efficiency of “C-Jam Blues,” a well-loved Duke Ellington tune from 1942. The Canadian first recorded the quantity as an RCA single in 1945 however his most well-known model got here eighteen years afterward his basic Verve album, Evening Prepare. Although Peterson was famend for his florid, Artwork Tatum-influenced enjoying, on the swinging “C-Jam Blues” propelled by Ray Brown’s fast-walking bass, he takes a extra minimalist strategy, merely stating the tune’s horn-like theme with one finger earlier than branching out for a solo.

On the identical album, Peterson married impeccable method and emotional sensitivity in his delightfully delicate interpretation of Hoagy Carmichael’s nostalgic ballad “Georgia On My Mind,” a US No. 1 for R&B star Ray Charles in 1960.

The affect of classical pianist/composer Sergei Rachmaninoff might be felt in Peterson’s rhapsodic fleet-of-finger intro and outro to his 1950 model of Sarah Vaughan’s signature tune “Tenderly,” a duo efficiency together with his long-serving double-bassist Ray Brown that evolves right into a swinging groove.

Although Peterson was famed for his locomotive-style uptempo numbers highlighting his mind-blowing technical prowess, he was a talented grasp of slower materials, which allowed him to point out a softer and extra intimate aspect. His atmospheric model of “Blue And Sentimental” – a observe made well-known by Rely Basie in 1938 – appeared on the pianist’s 1956 tribute to the jazz aristocrat (Oscar Peterson Performs Rely Basie) and was given a scrumptious late-night really feel emphasizing the tune’s blues roots.

Peterson additionally faucets into his love of the blues on the gently simmering “Night Train,” an evocative nocturne that dispels the notion that the pianist valued method over feeling. He performed the observe with a way of subtlety, nuance, and restraint that was the antithesis of the showy keyboard pyrotechnics that introduced him fame.

The collaborations

Nearly everybody within the jazz world wished to work with Oscar Peterson, such was his renown. His many collaborators through the years ranged from swing masters (Rely Basie) and bebop deities (Dizzy Gillespie) to acclaimed arrangers (Nelson Riddle), classical violin maestros (Itzhak Perlman), French film composers (Michel Legrand), and even, in his later years, main lights of the modern postbop jazz scene (Roy Hargrove). Considered one of Peterson’s notable early musical alliances was hooking up with tenor saxophonist Lester Younger, who had made his identify within the huge band swing period. Peterson revealed his ability as Younger’s accompanist on the 1954 album, Lester Younger With The Oscar Peterson Trio, which contained the leisurely ballad “There Will Never Be Another You.”

Collaborations got here thick and quick within the Nineteen Fifties. In 1957, Peterson teamed up with the gravel-voiced Louis Armstrong for “Makin’ Whoopee,” taken from the LP Louis Armstrong Meets Oscar Peterson. Although 24 years Peterson’s senior, “Satchmo” established a deep musical rapport with the youthful musician.

Two years later, Peterson loved a fruitful jazz summit with tenor saxophone titan Ben Webster that he described as “a unique and joyful experience.” They mixed their skills on the LP Ben Webster Meets Oscar Peterson. The standout observe was “When Your Lover Has Gone,” the place Webster’s gruff, breathy sax with its smoky sonorities floats above Peterson’s softly luminous chords.

One other horn participant, St. Louis trumpeter and flugelhornist Clark Terry, featured on the 1965 album Oscar Peterson Trio + One. Peterson was in awe of Terry, describing him as having “amazing technique, astonishing breath control, prodigious imagination, and one of the most versatile and lovely sounds jazz has ever known.” Apparently, on the album’s killer observe, “Mumbles,” Terry selected to sing quite than play trumpet, improvising scat vocals over Peterson’s bluesy accompaniment.

It was inevitable that the “Maharajah of the Piano” ought to meet “The First Lady of Song,” Ella Fitzgerald, within the recording studio. Producer Granz had guided their careers for the reason that late 40s however 1975’s Ella And Oscar was their first studio assignation the place that they had equal billing. (Beforehand, Peterson had recorded with Fitzgerald as a sideman). Although acclaimed for his flamboyant solos, Peterson confirmed an innate understanding of his position as an accompanist on the pair’s beautiful rendition of Burton Lane and Frank Loesser’s “I Hear Music,” a tune plucked from the 1940 Hollywood musical, Dancing On A Dime.

The pop covers

The arrival of Beatlemania within the Sixties triggered a pop and rock music tsunami that wounded and subsequently diminished jazz as a industrial pressure. However many jazz musicians, from instrumentalists like Peterson to vocalists reminiscent of Ella Fitzgerald, tailored to the state of affairs by updating their repertoire by introducing pop materials.

The worldwide rise of the Brazilian bossa nova as a potent musical pressure in 1964 noticed Peterson supply a jazz model of singer Astrud Gilberto’s Grammy-winning US chartbuster “The Girl from Ipanema,” which he reconfigured as a slinky groove that proved the proper platform for his tasteful extemporizations. In 1967, Peterson gave a jazz makeover to a different then-current pop hit of Brazilian origin: “Mas Que Nada,” Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66’s hit model of an uplifting Jorge Ben tune. It was certainly one of eight Brazilian tunes featured on Peterson’s deceptively titled Soul Español album.

By the early 70s, after he had left Verve for the German M.P.S. label, Peterson, like many different jazz musicians, embraced The Beatles’ music. Motions And Feelings, his 1969 pop-oriented album with preparations by Claus Ogerman, remodeled “Eleanor Rigby” from a somber elegy right into a finger-clicking slice of groovy lounge jazz augmented by shiny cinematic strings. His ability in recontextualizing pop materials was additionally highlighted on the identical album by a swinging revamp of Bobbie Gentry’s 1967 chart-topper “Ode To Billie Joe.”

The Songbook highlights

Norman Granz was the mastermind behind Peterson’s collection of themed songbook albums within the mid-to-late Nineteen Fifties, which the producer had efficiently launched through his different protege, Ella Fitzgerald. Specializing in the chief composers of The Nice American Songbook – George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Richard Rodgers, and Duke Ellington – Granz found a components that made each Fitzgerald and Peterson stars.

1959’s Oscar Peterson Performs The Richard Rodgers Songbook contained a dynamic studying of “Surrey With The Fringe On Top,” a music launched to jazz audiences by one other jazz pianist, Ahmad Jamal, a number of years earlier. Peterson gave it an individualistic therapy outlined by thick, harmonically wealthy chords and quicksilver right-hand melodies.

The second in his collection of Verve songbook albums, 1959’s Oscar Peterson Performs The Cole Porter Songbook featured two timeless interpretations of jazz requirements. The sluggish and stately “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye” spotlighted how Peterson’s delicate filigreed piano underlined the music’s emotional poignancy. In sharp distinction, a carefree association of “Night & Day” was pushed by a swing pulse weaponized by bassist Ray Brown and drummer Ed Thigpen’s rhythmic elan.

Additionally relationship from 1959, Oscar Peterson Performs The George Gershwin Songbook contained two tunes taken from the composer’s iconic 1935 “folk opera,” Porgy & Bess: elegant variations of “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” and “Summertime,” each highlighting Peterson’s delicate contact and his sound’s crystalline magnificence.

A staunch Duke Ellington fan, Peterson later grew to become a buddy although they by no means recorded an album collectively. The Canadian, nonetheless, recorded two tributes to the Washington DC composer; 1952’s Oscar Peterson Performs Duke Ellington, and its 1960 sequel, Oscar Peterson Performs the Duke Ellington Songbook. The chief spotlight of the latter album was “Take The ‘A’ Train,” a propulsive trio groove whose verve encapsulated Peterson’s cherished musical values – enjoying with conviction, dynamism, and a joyful swinging pulse.

The late nice Quincy Jones as soon as described Peterson as “one of the most dangerous musicians to ever walk the planet,” jokily referring, after all, to the pianist’s awe-inspiring method and formidable musical arsenal, which was mentioned to unnerve different jazz pianists. Whereas his piano enjoying impressed awe, off the bandstand, Peterson was a heat, well-read, and personable man who was no stranger to humility. Musically, although, he was a phenomenon whose nonpareil genius is revealed within the above number of basic tracks. Collectively, they paint a vivid and well-rounded portrait of one of many biggest and best-loved pianists that ever lived.

Hearken to the most effective of Oscar Peterson now.