Oscar Peterson: 1925 – 2007: Piano Great Felt at Home in Chicago
By Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune
Dec. 25—- In the second half of the 20th Century, no jazz pianist could touch Oscar Peterson when it came to sheer mastery of the instrument.
The technical brilliance, unprecedented speed and hard-driving swing of Peterson’s best work inspired generations of artists. But it also drove them to despair, for they knew Peterson’s feats could not be matched, much less topped.
Moreover, no place on earth forged a closer musical link to Peterson than Chicago, for the pianist was a fixture at the long-gone London House starting in the 1950s and a headliner in the city’s better jazz rooms and concert halls ever since.
Peterson, who died of kidney failure Sunday at home in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga at age 82, considered Chicago his musical anchor. The seminal trio he led from 1953 to ’58 with bassist Ray Brown and guitarist Herb Ellis — and subsequent editions with drummer Ed Thigpen — practically was in residence here.
“He was one of the greatest pianists of all time, classical and jazz,” said Ramsey Lewis, who first heard Peterson at the London House when Lewis was a teenager.
“I remember Oscar Peterson coming up on stage with a sold-out crowd, with a lot of excitement, and once he started playing, it was as if he invented the word swing.
“Although people were sitting there with steaks on their plates and all that food, he brought that house to a hush.”
To Peterson, Chicago — with its deep history of jazz pianism dating back to Jelly Roll Morton in the Roaring ’20s — was a constant source of musical inspiration. The “London House Sessions,” a boxed set documenting the trio’s work at the celebrated downtown showroom, stands as a pinnacle for the art of small-group jazz.
“If I had to name a home for this trio, it would have to be Chicago,” the virtuoso pianist said in a rare interview with the Tribune, in 1990.
“Chicago is piano city, more so, in a lot of ways, than New York. With people like Larry Novak, Ramsey [Lewis] and Audrey Morris, you’ve got the best people in the business right there.
“In fact, when we played Chicago in the ’50s, I could almost tell you before any set who was going to be sitting where in the front row.”
To jazz pianists, Peterson exemplified a level of virtuosity encountered only once before in the history of the instrument: in the work of an earlier piano god, Art Tatum, whose particular brand of pyrotechnics also proved inimitable.
“Oscar Peterson was the master,” said Dick Hyman, a widely admired pianist famous for having scored many of Woody Allen’s films.
“All of the rest of us just tried to emulate him. He had the technique and the flow of invention that established an entire school of piano playing.”
Yet many observers chafed at Peterson’s keyboard wizardry, concluding that the high sheen of his technique somehow diminished the jazz authenticity of his playing. In the 1960s, a Paris critic called Peterson’s art “music for Pavlov’s dogs”; a British reviewer railed against his alleged “mechanical posturings.”
And Miles Davis was withering: “Oscar makes me sick because he copies everybody,” he said in an interview. “He even had to learn how to play the blues.”
The passage of time, and Peterson’s ever-rising global stature, eventually rendered Davis’ view the minority position.
But no one could dispute the challenges Peterson overcame in achieving international recognition early in his life.
Born into a poor, working-class family in Montreal, Peterson wore patched-up pants to school and suffered beatings from his father, a railroad porter who applied a belt when the young pianist had not mastered his music lessons.
As Peterson’s keyboard prowess grew, his father cut him down to size by playing for him a recording of Tatum, the icon to whom Peterson most often has been compared.
“My first bruising with Art Tatum came at a very tender age, in my teens,” Peterson said in Gene Lees’ biography “Oscar Peterson: The Will to Swing” (Prima).
Peterson’s father put on a recording of Tatum performing “Tiger Rag,” a tour de force, “And, truthfully, I gave up the piano for two solid months,” said Peterson, “and I had crying fits at night.”
Peterson came back to the piano and flourished, however, developing a technique that was almost equal in stature to Tatum’s but stylistically quite different from it. Doubly blessed with a gossamer touch and a ferocious rhythmic drive, he thrived in a piano-bass-guitar setting, achieving a speed and momentum that rendered a drummer unnecessary.
By the late 1940s, no less than Duke Ellington and impresario Norman Granz traveled to Montreal to hear the jazz wunderkind, and Peterson’s career was launched. Starting in 1950, Granz featured the pianist in the Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts that toured the world and recorded him copiously.
The partnership between Peterson and Granz, whom the pianist called “my closest friend in jazz,” enabled Peterson to work with the greatest stars of the era, from trumpeters Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie to singers Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. Through dozens of albums on Granz’s Pablo label, Peterson established himself as “the consummate bebop piano player,” said pianist Ellis Marsalis, referencing Peterson’s mastery of the phenomenal speed and harmonic sophistication that are the essence of bebop.
That Peterson flourished despite a nearly lifelong battle with arthritis, which afflicted his hands and knees, only underscores the scope of his achievement.
“I consider recording and playing with Oscar absolutely the highlights of my life,” said clarinet virtuoso Buddy DeFranco, who performed regularly with Peterson on the Philharmonic circuit.
“A lot of guys play a lot of notes, but Oscar also had impeccable taste and great harmonic development with what he did. To me, he was on the level of genius, like Art Tatum. … Oscar had a touch on the piano that you knew immediately.”
Added drummer Louie Bellson, “He played ballads with a beautiful soul.”
In 1993, Peterson suffered a stroke that paralyzed his left side and left his arm as motionless as a block of wood, he said in a Tribune interview. After battling the “mental trauma” of depression, the pianist decided to try to reclaim his art, making his post-stroke American debut — where else? — in the Chicago area, at the Ravinia Festival, in August of 1994.
Playing just a few rudimentary octaves and chordal fills with his left hand, Peterson relied more heavily on his right. But that hand alone still could play more piano than most musicians could with 10 fingers.
Even so, a new Peterson began to emerge after his return. In coming years, Peterson would emphasize the lyric beauty of his own compositions, such as the pictorial “Nigerian Marketplace,” the Chopinesque “When Summer Comes” and the poignant “Evening Song” (which Peterson gave its world premiere at Ravinia, in June of 1998).
Peterson — who won 7 Grammy Awards and a Lifetime Achievement Grammy and last year was honored when his image was placed on a Canadian stamp — in recent months had been in failing health. He is survived by his fourth wife, Kelly Ann Green, and seven children.
Said Audrey Morris, a noted Chicago singer-pianist who knew Peterson from the London House era, “We’re all lucky to have heard him.”
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Notable Oscar Peterson recordings
“The Complete Young Oscar Peterson” (RCA). How did the colossal pianist sound before he achieved greatness? You can hear traces of Teddy Wilson and Nat “King” Cole in Peterson’s early pianism.
“Jazz at the Philharmonic: The Oscar Peterson Trio Set” (Verve). This release features Peterson’s first significant trio, with guitarist Barney Kessel and bassist Ray Brown; and his more famous one, with Herb Ellis replacing Kessel. The common thread in both instances remains Peterson, whose propulsive rhythmic drive has to be heard to be believed.
“The Oscar Brown Trio at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival” (Verve). Though Peterson recorded prolifically, this disc captures his classic trio at its most combustive. Peterson and friends are swinging standard tunes here, but the intricate give-and-take transforms them.
“Oscar Peterson: London House Sessions” (Verve). Recorded in the early 1960s — when the latest incarnation of Peterson’s trio featured bassist Ray Brown and drummer Ed Thigpen — this 5-CD boxed set documents the palpable electricity the pianist generated in Chicago. The repertoire, meanwhile, pushes beyond the usual standard tunes into Peterson originals and funkier fare.
“Oscar Peterson: The Trio” (Pablo). Those who claimed that Peterson played with too much “polish,” listen to this. Joined by guitarist Joe Pass and bassist Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen, he rips into “Blues Etude” and “Chicago Blues,” among others.
— Howard Reich
hreich@tribune.com
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