[Dixielandjazz] N Y Times Oscar Peterson Obit

[Marek Boym]

Peterson was great.  Byt sometimes, as Billy Taylor said, his
technique got the better of him.  Which is why I've always considered
the guitar trios superior to the drums ones - the guitar kept him in
curb!
Cheers

On 25/12/2007, Steve Barbone <barbonestreet at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 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.
>
>
>
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