by R.G. Kastelein

 

Hearing Peterson's music is like your first sip of whiskey on a cold winter evening.

From my battered old AM/FM radio clock curled my first auditory experience with the Jazz legend when I was a kid - listening to CFRO - Coop radio - in Vancouver back in the late seventies. His fingers literally exploding across the keyboards hooked me hard - it was my first real taste of jazz - it was a feast - and it was a pivotal moment in the development of my own taste in music.

Long before the days of Canadian musical exports Céline Dion, Shania Twain, Alanis Morissette and Bryan Adams -  Oscar Peterson cut a huge path into the international world of jazz and did so as a black Canadian...

Duke Ellington, called Peterson the "Maharajah of the keyboard" and simply one of the greatest piano players in the history of jazz.

Ray Charles simply had this to say about the Canadian jazzman, "Oscar Peterson is one mother fucking piano player!"

Over the years, he jammed with the likes of Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Stan Getz and many others.

 

Goodbye Oscar Peterson...

Peterson died Sunday night at his home in Mississauga, Ont., from kidney failure. He was 82.

Did you enjoy this article? Please bookmark it onto: