OSCAR PETERSON
Oscar Emmanuel Peterson was born in Montreal on Aug. 15, 1925. He died of kidney failure at his home in Mississauga, Ont., on Sunday night. He was 82. He leaves his wife, Kelly, and six children, Lynn, Gay, Oscar Jr., Norman, Joel and Celine from different marriages.
TORONTO — Few pianists swung as hard or played as fast and with as many grace notes as Canada's Oscar Peterson.
The classically trained musician could play it all, from Chopin and Liszt to blues, stride, boogie, bebop and beyond. He led his own jazz trios, performed with such legendary figures as Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong, who called him "the man with four hands," recorded more than 200 albums and wrote such memorable works as Hymn to Freedom and the Canadiana Suite.
"A virtuoso without peer," concluded his biographer, Gene Lees, in The Will to Swing. When Mr. Peterson died this week, music lovers around the world mourned the loss of a lyrical stylist and one of the greatest piano players of all time.
The story of Oscar Peterson's rise from immigrant poverty to world fame is one of popular music's great inspirational tales. Born in Montreal's St. Henri district, he was the fourth of five children born to a Canadian Pacific Railway porter and his wife who came to Canada from the Virgin Islands. His father, Daniel, a self-taught amateur musician and a strict disciplinarian, insisted that his children develop musical skills. Oscar began on piano and trumpet, but dropped the latter at age seven after a bout with tuberculosis, a disease that took the life of his brother, Fred.
By 14, he was studying with Paul de Marky, a renowned Hungarian-born classical pianist who piqued his interest in jazz, particularly works by the pianist Art Tatum. Mr. Peterson always credited his sister, Daisy, a noted piano teacher in Montreal who also taught such Canadian jazz musicians as Oliver Jones and Joe Sealy, with being an important teacher and influence on his career. Soon, the young Oscar was winning piano competitions. But his father never let it go to his head. He played his son a recording of Tatum's renowned Tiger Rag that caused him to quit piano for two months.
Mr. Peterson credited his father with instilling in him an unwavering will to succeed. When Oscar dropped out of high school to play in the Johnny Holmes Orchestra, becoming its only black member, a displeased Daniel Peterson gave him some stern advice. Recalled Mr. Peterson: "He told me, 'If you're going to go out there and be a piano player, don't just be another one. Be the best.'" The 17-year-old Oscar took the words to heart. Within a few years, he was leading his own trio at Montreal's Alberta Lounge, where he developed his distinctive style and attracted some illustrious onlookers, including Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald. Then, on one fateful night, U.S. jazz impresario Norman Granz heard Mr. Peterson at the club and was so impressed that he invited him to play at New York's Carnegie Hall.
Oscar Peterson's appearance on Mr. Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic program in 1949 was a watershed event. Mr. Peterson did not have a work visa, so Mr. Granz decided to introduce him as a surprise guest on the bill at Carnegie that included Charlie Parker, Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins.
Although the young pianist was terrified, Mr. Granz assured him it would be worth it.
"He told me, 'You'll know if you have what it takes, and if you do what you do and they love it, then you know you've made it,'" Mr. Peterson later recalled. Performing with bassist Ray Brown, who would become a long-time sideman, Mr. Peterson brought the house down with his renditions of songs like Fine and Dandy and Tenderly.
