[Dixielandjazz] N Y Times Oscar Peterson Obit

[Steve Barbone]

Here is OP's obit from the NY Times. The critical portions below talk of OP
detractors. Many said  he had so much technique that he had no soul.

Well, they did not hear everything OP did. I particularly remember a trio
rendition of Green Dolphin Street that had more jazz soul than most others
will ever play. And very original in structure. Simple one or two finger
melodic phrases etc., strung together by that great rhythm section, lots of
space etc. Also a "Georgia On My Mind" that combined technique with soul and
a locked hands Blues that blows most other pianists far away.

As you can tell, I dismiss his critics out of hand. Especially Billy Taylor
who said OPs facility sometimes gets in the way of people's listening.
Perhaps true as far as it goes, but OP had a much larger audience than most
jazz musicians of his era.

Miles Davis disliked his playing but then Miles was short on technique and
maybe just a bit jealous? <grin>

OP was IMO, one of the best jazz musicians I ever saw.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

NY TIMES - December 24, 2007 - By RICHARD SEVERO

Oscar Peterson, Virtuoso of Jazz, Dies at 82

Oscar Peterson, whose dazzling piano playing made him one of the most
popular jazz artists in history, died Sunday night at his home in
Mississauga, Ontario, outside Toronto. He was 82.

The cause was kidney failure, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
reported. Mr. Peterson had performed publicly for a time even after a stroke
he suffered in 1993 had compromised movement in his left hand.

Mr. Peterson was one of the greatest virtuosos in jazz, with a technique
that was always meticulous and ornate and sometimes overwhelming. But rather
than expand the boundaries of jazz, he used his gifts in the service of
moderation and reliability and in gratifying his devoted audiences, whether
playing in a trio or solo. His technical accomplishments were always
evident, almost transparently so. Even at his peak, there was very little
tension in his playing.

One of the most prolific major stars in jazz history, he amassed an enormous
discography. From the 1950s until his death, he released sometimes four or
five albums a year, toured Europe and Japan frequently, and became a big
draw at jazz festivals.

Norman Granz, his influential manager and producer, helped Mr. Peterson
realize that success, setting loose a flow of records on his own Verve and
Pablo labels and establishing him as a favorite in the touring ³Jazz at the
Philharmonic² concerts in the 1940s and ¹50s.

Mr. Peterson won eight Grammy awards, as well as almost every possible honor
in the jazz world. He played alongside giants of jazz like Louis Armstrong,
Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Roy Eldridge, Nat King Cole, Stan Getz, Dizzy
Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington.

Ellington referred to him as ³Maharajah of the keyboard.² Count Basie said,
³Oscar Peterson plays the best ivory box I¹ve ever heard." The pianist and
conductor Andre Previn called Mr. Peterson ³the best² there was among jazz
pianists.

In a review of a performance in 1987, Stephen Holden, writing in The New
York Times, said, ³Mr. Peterson¹s rock-solid sense of swing, grounded in
Count Basie, is balanced by a delicacy of tone and fleetness of touch that
make his extended runs seem to almost disappear into the sky.² He added,
³His amazing speed was matched by an equally amazing sense of thematic
invention.²

But many critics found Mr. Peterson more derivative than original,
especially early in his career. Some even suggested that his fantastic
technique lacked coherence and was almost too much for some listeners to
comprehend. 

Billy Taylor, a fellow pianist and jazz historian, said he thought that
while Mr. Peterson was a ³remarkable musician,² his ³phenomenal facility
sometimes gets in the way of people¹s listening.²

Whitney Balliett, the jazz critic of The New Yorker, wrote in 1966 that Mr.
Peterson¹s playing ³continues to be a pudding made of the leavings of Art
Tatum, Nat Cole and Teddy Wilson.²

The critical ambivalence was typified in 1973 by a review of a Peterson
performance by John S. Wilson of The Times. Mr. Wilson wrote: ³For the last
20 years, Oscar Peterson has been one of the most dazzling exponents of the
flying fingers school of piano playing. His performances have tended to be
beautifully executed displays of technique but woefully weak on emotional
projection.² 

The complaints evoked those heard in the 1940s about the great concert
violinist Jascha Heifetz, who was occasionally accused of being so
technically brilliant that one could not find his or the composer¹s heart
and soul in the music he played.

Gene Lees, Mr. Peterson¹s biographer, defended Mr. Peterson as ³a
summational artist.²

³So was Mozart. So was Bach,² Mr. Lees wrote in his biography, ³The Will to
Swing (1990). ³Bach and Mozart were both dealing with known vocabularies and
an accepted body of aesthetic principles.² He noted that just as Bach used
material that he first heard in Vivaldi. ³Oscar uses a curious spinning
figure that he got from Dizzy Gillespie,² Mr. Lees wrote.

Oscar Emmanuel Peterson was born in the poor St. Antoine district of
Montreal on Aug. 15, 1925, one of five children of Daniel Peterson, a West
Indian immigrant, and the former Olivia John, whom Daniel had met in
Montreal. Daniel Peterson worked as a sleeping car porter on the Canadian
Pacific Railway and had taught himself how to play the organ before he
landed in Halifax in 1917. Mr. Peterson¹s mother, who also had roots in the
Caribbean, encouraged Oscar to study music.

As a boy, Oscar began to learn the trumpet as well as the piano. At age 7,
he contracted tuberculosis and was hospitalized for 13 months. Fearing the
strain the trumpet might have on his son¹s lungs, Daniel Peterson persuaded
Oscar to concentrate on piano. He studied first with Lou Hopper, then with
Paul Alexander de Marsky, a Hungarian who had also given lessons to Oscar¹s
older sister, Daisy.

By his own account, Oscar believed he had become quite accomplished by age
14. Then heard a recording by Art Tatum.

³I gave up the piano for two solid months,² Mr. Peterson later recalled, and
had ³crying fits at night² because, he thought, that nobody else could ever
be as good as Tatum.

The same year, however, he won an amateur competition sponsored by the CBC,
prompting him to drop out of Montreal High School so that he could spend all
his time playing the piano.

By 1942, Oscar Peterson was known in Canada as the ³Brown Bomber of
Boogie-Woogie,² an allusion to the nickname of the boxer Joe Louis and also
to Mr. Peterson¹s physical stature ‹ 6 foot 3 and 25o pounds. Mr. Peterson
became the only black member of the Johnny Holmes Orchestra, which toured
both Canada and the United States. In parts of the United States, he
discovered that he, like other blacks, would not be served in the same
hotels and restaurants as the white musicians. Many times they would bring
food out to him as he sat in the band¹s bus, he recalled.

For a time, Mr. Peterson was so identified with boogie-woogie, a popular
dance music, that he was denied wider recognition as a serious jazz
musician. In 1947, the jazz impresario Norman Granz was on his way to
Montreal¹s airport in a taxi when he heard a live broadcast of Peterson
playing at a Montreal lounge. He ordered the driver to turn the taxi around
and take him to the lounge. There he persuaded Mr. Peterson to move away
from boogie-woogie.

Mr. Peterson eventually became a mainstay of the ³Jazz at the Philharmonic²
series, which Mr. Granz created in the 1940s. In 1949, Mr. Peterson made his
debut at Carnegie Hall and became a sensation. And a year later, he won Down
Beat magazine¹s reader¹s poll for the first time; he would go on to win it
13 more times, the last time in 1972.

Over the years, his albums sold well, and he sometimes sang, recording
numbers with Billy Holiday, Fred Astaire, Benny Carter, Louis Armstrong,
Ella Fitzgerald, Roy Eldridge, Lester Young, Stan Getz, Buddy DeFranco and
many others.

Among his more notable long-playing recordings were the Song Books of Irving
Berlin, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers, Harry
Warren, Harold Arlen and Jimmy McHugh.

Perhaps his most famous threesome ‹ from 1953 to 1958 ‹ was with the
guitarist Herb Ellis and the bassist Ray Brown.

In 1964, he recorded ³The Canadiana Suite,² an extended work written for his
home country; later, he wrote ³African Suite² and then ³A Royal Wedding
Suite,² for the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer. Verve and Pablo
released most of Mr. Peterson¹s work, but he also recorded for the MPS and
Telarc labels, among others.

Mr. Peterson was frequently invited to perform for heads of state, including
Queen Elizabeth II and President Richard M. Nixon. In 2005 he became the
first living person other than a reigning monarch to obtain a commemorative
stamp in Canada, where streets, squares, concert halls and schools are named
after him.

According to the CBC, Mr. Peterson was married four times and had six
children from his first and third marriages: Lyn, Sharon, Gay, Oscar Jr.,
Norman and Joel. He also had a daughter, Celine, with his fourth wife,
Kelly. 

Mr. Peterson continued playing after his stroke in 1993 because, as he told
The Chicago Tribune, ³I think I have a closeness with the instrument that
I¹ve treasured over the years.² Before long he was back on tour and
recording ³Side By Side² with Itzhak Perlman, having learned to do more
playing with his right hand. As he told Down Beat in 1997: ³When I sit down
to the piano, I don¹t want any scuffling. I want it to be a love affair.²

Ben Ratliff contributed reporting.