Oscar Peterson

Fluent in the Language of Jazz

In the world of jazz, Canadian-born musician Oscar Peterson is a living legend, famous for infusing his work with fluidity and technical perfection. As a pianist, he's accompanied the best – from Billy Holiday to Louis Armstrong.

One would be tempted to call him "Oscar the Unstoppable" if it didn't seem so lacking in respect. And Oscar Peterson deserves respect: for being one of the most brilliant and innovative pianists in jazz, for putting out an incredible, uncountable number of recordings, for tirelessly striving for perfection for more than 50 years. Even after suffering a stroke at age 67, he was quickly back at the piano, recording, performing and passing on his knowledge to a younger generation of jazz musicians.

Peterson was born on Aug. 15, 1925, in Montreal, Canada, to West Indian immigrants. His father, Daniel Peterson, was a porter for the Canadian Pacific Railway and a self-taught musician who made sure that each of his five children learned to play the piano. "My father saw music as a way to escape from the railway," one of the few job opportunities for blacks at the time, as the musician recalled in a 1992 television documentary. Peterson's first teacher was his older sister Daisy, whom he remembers as "a real taskmaster." "I used to call her 'Attila,'" he once told an interviewer.

But that didn't stop him from trying to get out of practicing, especially when his father's work took him away from home for two weeks at a stretch. "Daisy always used to practice the lesson hard the day before my father returned," said Peterson, who has perfect pitch. "So I would sit on the stoop and hear what she played, and get it down that way, by listening without practicing. That worked fine until Dad found out what I was up to and began giving different lessons to each of us."

Later he studied with Lou Hooper, who was influenced by the Harlem jazz pianists of the 1920s, and with the Hungarian Paul Alexander de Marky, a classical pianist whose own teacher had studied with the pianist and composer Franz Liszt. In 1940, at the age of 14, Peterson won a national amateur contest sponsored by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and afterward made his professional debut on a weekly radio show in Montreal. By the mid-1940s he was recording with RCA Victor Canada and in 1948 formed his first trio, which played regularly at Montreal's Alberta Lounge.

A grand Carnegie Hall debut

Peterson's big break came when jazz impresario Norman Granz heard him play: the story goes that Granz was in a taxi on his way to the Montreal airport when he heard Peterson's trio on the radio, broadcast live from the Alberta Lounge. Granz told the driver to head straight to the club, where he met the 22-year-old pianist, marking the start of a lifelong friendship as well as Peterson's international career.

Granz invited Peterson to New York to appear in the Jazz at the Philharmonic concert series at Carnegie Hall in 1949. As a member of that group, Peterson played and toured in the U.S., Europe and Japan with jazz greats from Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins to Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Getz. It was quite an apprenticeship for the young pianist, who had dropped out of high school to concentrate on his music. "I miss playing with those guys," Peterson said in a 1996 interview. "There was an expectancy that got fulfilled by playing with Benny Carter or Dizzy or Roy Eldridge or Coleman Hawkins. Somebody had something special going every night."

Peterson had something pretty special going, too. Influenced by two musicians as different as Art Tatum and Nat "King" Cole, his playing combined the fluidity and technical perfection of the former with the blues sensibility of the latter. Peterson's numerous recordings - he is thought to have recorded more than any other jazz pianist ever - demonstrate his mastery of styles ranging from blues to swing and hard bop, and his classical training shines through in his precision even at the fastest tempos.

In response to critics who have called his playing too "intellectual," favoring technique over substance, he told one interviewer: "I think it was my piano teacher who said you have to gain a technique on the piano. It's like a language. If you don't have control of the language, you can't have anything to say. I still look at playing that way today. When I sit down to the piano, I don't want any scuffling, I want it to be a love affair. I don't want to be sitting there saying, 'Where do I put this finger?'"

"The best trio I've ever known"

Peterson's love affair with jazz really took off in the 1950s. The Oscar Peterson Trio made a name for itself with its sophisticated and high-energy ensemble work, particularly from 1953 to 1958, when the trio included bassist Ray Brown and guitarist Herb Ellis. In the best tradition of jazz improvisation, each challenged the others to new heights of musical achievement while still working together smoothly as a group, as their classic 1956 recording "Live at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival" proves.

"I've never said it aloud before, but that was the best trio I've ever known," Peterson told an interviewer in 1990, when the three got back together to tour and record "The Legendary Oscar Peterson Trio: Live at the Blue Note" in New York. His high opinion of the trio was obviously shared by others: the recording won the Grammy for Best Jazz Group Instrumental Performance, one of seven Grammys Peterson has been awarded for his recordings.