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It isn't really fair that anyone should have the prodigious talent, combined with the incredible work ethic, that made Oscar Peterson the toast of the jazz world from his pre-arranged "discovery" at a Jazz at The Philharmonic concert at Carnegie Hall in 1949 until his death in Mississauga Monday.
The range of his reach and his talent is absolutely astounding. Any jazz fan can look through his/her collection and nearly trace the evolution of the modern genre through Peterson's remarkable career.
He will be recalled as many things, including the unequalled technician he was at the beginning of his career, who so amazed and confounded his peers. The dexterity and speed of the waves of notes piling up on the beaches of sound he laid down were as shocking to the rest of the world, as was Oscar's own discovery that the Art Tatum record of Tiger Rag that his father Daniel played for him when he was just a boy was not two pianists but just one — and a blind one at that.
His association with jazz Everyman Norman Granz, who discovered OP at the Alberta Lounge in Montréal, introduced him to the world at Carnegie and then made his trio the house band for the iconic Verve label in the 50s, when so much of the legacy of jazz was created, was central to his legacy.
And Granz was just as central to Oscar meeting and marrying his wonderful wife Kelly who is as well known to anyone who knows the family in Mississauga, as her husband was around the world.
The Peterson Trio is the backdrop for so many superb records that built the foundations of the house of jazz, starting with the inspired collaborations with Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. Those albums arguably feature the two best male and female singers of all time, clearly the best trumpeter in the world and probably the best jazz pianist who ever lived.
The good doctor of the keyboards played with everyone and, when I interviewed him in 2003 for the publication of his autobiography, A Jazz Odyssey The Life of Oscar Peterson, he could drop a funny and revealing anecdote about each and every one, from Duke Ellington to Fred Astaire to Frank Sinatra, at whose cocktail party his trio once played a demand engagement.
In all of the hubbub about his inspired playing in the world-wide tributes now pouring in, there is too-scant recognition of Peterson's consummate skills in the refined art of accompaniment, especially to vocalists.
He made albums with virtually every singer that mattered and a few that didn't, at least until they were paired with Oscar. He had the ability to make each and every one of them sound their best, which is the highest praise an accompanist can receive.
In the liner notes to the reissue of 1963's Bill Henderson with the Oscar Peterson Trio, Henderson says, "You see, Oscar is a singer himself, and he knows. He's like a full orchestra. Whenever he plays, he plays all of the piano. You can hear all the changes and he makes it a simple thing for you to just lay back and sing. He's listening to you all the time and while he's listening, he's playing all the right things for you. There were a couple of times when I thought he was in my hip pocket."
As Richard Palmer noted in the liner notes to the Jazz Odyssey CD, Peterson's skill in the role generally comes as a surprise. "No one could have expected a raw young Canadian whose imperious technique and persona seemed to rival Art Tatum's to be even an adequate accompanist... but Peterson proved to be a highly sensitive listener and steeped in the work of those he now backed. Most important of all, he had an almost unerring instinct for what a particular musician required."
It is this extraordinary radar that makes so many of his albums with the trio and guests, be it Sonny Stitt or Clark Terry or Stuff Smith or Roy Eldridge or Coleman Hawkins or Ben Webster or Dizzy Gillespie with Stan Getz, absolute treasures.
The couple of times I interviewed Peterson at his home, I expressed my admiration for his singing. He would demur and repeat the anecdote about how he and Nat King Cole, who was probably the prime influence on his piano style, along with Tatum, had made a joking pact a long time ago in a New York bar. "He said 'I won't play the piano," recalled Oscar, " if you won't sing.'"
Fact is, he sang very well but, unfortunately, sounded a little too much like Cole for comfort.
The obvious question for a reporter from the local community newspaper to ask Peterson was why he chose to live in Mississauga in 1972. (When, to our everlasting shame, racism raised its ugly head when a group of residents in Sherwood Forrest took up a petition opposing his plans to move to their neighbourhood.)
His answer: "I love it here. It’s so nice to come back to a place I love. Mississauga has a feeling for me. I want to live in a home. I was raised in a home. Mississauga is a city in its own right. If I’ve in any way helped to put Mississauga on the map, I’m happy."
Then he would launch into a tribute to his great friend Hazel, who shared his view on Mississauga as centre-of-the-universe.
In his later years, Peterson was seen much more often in public in Mississauga and he was inevitably gracious, charming and thankful for the honours which a more resentful man might have suggested were long overdue.
I had the privilege to see him perform several times in the past few years, at the Hazel's Hope concert at Roy Thomson Hall, at the superb Ron Duquette and Bill King-produced Living Arts Centre tribute in Sept. 2003 and at the school named in his honour.
But the performance that remains most clearly in memory is the unplanned one at HMV in downtown Toronto for his 80th birthday in the summer of 2005. The official ceremonies were over when Oscar rose from his wheelchair and willed his way to the piano bench to give an impromptu performance of his own composition called Requiem.
He introduced it by speaking of how it had come out of the sense of loss he felt for those the jazz world has lost lately, including bassists Ray Brown, Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen, guitarists Barney Kessel and Joe Pass, tenor man Al Cohn and “the impressario of the century” as he called him, Norman Granz.
He played beautifully, as Diana Krall (above) and Elvis Costello watched in rapt attention from the other side of the piano.
This was the brilliant work of the mature artist whose physical skills may have deteriorated but who could transmit the profound depth of his pain with a few deceptively simple strokes.
We feel his loss so keenly because he was one of the original architects of the music. He was there at its inception: Canada's quietly brilliant ambassador of swing.
Our one remaining touchstone to the golden age of age of jazz is gone.