Oscar Peterson – Jazz Pianist Extraordinary

One of the most influential jazz musicians the world has ever known, Oscar Emmanuel Peterson was born on August 15, 1925, in Little Burgundy, Montreal. His living environment was permeated with jazz music as he lived in a locality where the majority of the people were African American. When he was only five years old, he learned to play the piano and the trumpet. After suffering from tuberculosis a couple of years later, he dropped the trumpet and turned all his efforts towards the piano.

His main teacher in these years was his self-taught father, who worked as a loader for the Canadian Pacific Railways. He taught Oscar and his four brothers everything he learned while playing the piano when he was in the merchant marine. His sister caught his attention and taught him classical music.

Since he started playing the piano, Oscar made sure he got the basics right. He would faithfully practice his scales and classical studies every day, a habit that gave him a good grounding in the basics that in his later years contributed to much of his mastery. on the piano. One of his piano teachers in his early years was Paul De Marky, who also, like his sister, gave Oscar classical piano lessons.

He began to familiarize himself with traditional jazz recordings, which prompted him to learn many ragtimes and boogie-woogie tunes of his time. This ability of his earned him the label “Boogie-Woogie’s Brown Bomber”. When he was nine years old, his playing was as mature as any other professional. He spent between four and six hours every day perfecting himself on the piano, a habit he kept up long into his professional career.

When he was 14 years old, he participated in a national competition organized by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in which he was the winner. This marked the beginning of his professional career. His first permanent job was on a radio show once a week. He also played in hotels and music halls.

The inspiration for his style of playing came from most of the jazz musicians idolized by any pianist at the time: Nat King Cole, Teddy Wilson, James P Johnson, and Art Tatum. Later in his career, the tables were turned when Art Tatum was compared to him in his later years of success. The first time he heard an Art Tatum piece was when his father played Tiger Rag for him. After hearing it, he almost lost faith in his ability to play the piano to the best of his ability. He later admitted that Art Tatum’s technique intimidated him and that made him decide to be humble about his own ability to play. Oscar Peterson ended up becoming good friends with Tatum eventually, but he never let go of his awe of the man. He rarely played the piano when Tatum was around.

Not only was he mesmerized by Tatum’s music, but he also admired the pianists that Tatum admired when he first started playing. His work was very inspiring and, note for note, he picked up sections of some of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s music. His work with his trio, the Oscar Patterson Trio, with Herb Ellis on guitar and Ellis Brown on bass, had many such references.

His influences extend into classical music which he has attributed to his sister Daisy Sweeney. The discipline that he implied was one of the key skills that he learned when he began to learn piano with her.

Peterson found a good friend and collaborator in Norman Granz. Granz discovered this when he heard Peterson play in a club via live radio broadcast. He was traveling in a taxi at the time. Hearing him play, he asked the driver to take him immediately to the club where Oscar Peterson was playing.

Granz arranged for him a concert at Carnegie Hall as part of his Jazz at the Philharmonic series. From then on, Granz served as his manager. Granz was behind Peterson in the fight against segregation. He stepped between the trio and a policeman who was trying to prevent them from riding in “whites only” taxis.

Peterson was plagued by health problems throughout his life. He had arthritis to the point where he couldn’t button his shirt. He was too heavy for his size, which affected his mobility. But physical problems or not, history will certainly record Oscar Peterson as one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time.