The Best Of Oscar Peterson: Classics From The Legendary Jazz Pianist
Dubbed the ‘Maharajah of the Piano,’ the Canadian virtuoso was one of the key figures in popularizing the piano trio.
From Count Basie’s plinky minimalism to bebopper Bud Powell’s high-velocity fusillades and the lush romantic reveries of Bill Evans, the pages of jazz history contain a multitude of influential piano players who cultivated a distinctive sound. But no list of historically important jazz pianists would be complete without the mighty Oscar Peterson, a formidable Canadian musician who in terms of sheer technique set an impossibly high bar that few could match.
An early disciple of the jazz piano trio format pioneered by his idol Nat King Cole, Peterson blended ultra-speedy fingerwork with elements from blues, classical music, ragtime, swing, and boogie-woogie to create an unmistakable signature style. Considered by many to be Canada’s greatest musical export, he enjoyed a long and storied career that produced over 200 albums, earned eight Grammy Awards, and accumulated a sackful of other accolades, including France’s prestigious Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Navigating Peterson’s enormous discography is no easy feat, even for the virtuosic pianist’s most ardent and knowledgeable fans. So, to save you from that challenging task, we’ve selected a few classic tracks that we hope will inspire a deeper investigation of his back catalog. From bluesy ballads and high-octane swingers to groovy bossa novas and slick pop makeovers, the best Oscar Peterson tracks encapsulate the unique artistry of a musician who could take any tune and transform it into a compelling keyboard symphony.
Listen to the best of Oscar Peterson now.
From piano prodigy to jazz superstar
Oscar Peterson was born in Montreal, Canada, in 1925 to parents of West Indian heritage. Encouraged by his father, a self-taught amateur musician, Peterson was five when he began his musical journey, playing the trumpet and the piano. After a bout of tuberculosis at seven years old, he dropped the trumpet, focusing solely on the piano. Considered a natural prodigy, he practiced furiously and quickly excelled. Such was his talent that he was taken under the wing of Paul de Marky, a Hungarian-born pianist who had been a student of István Thomán, a former pupil of the great classical music pianist and composer Franz Liszt. While he blossomed as a classical pianist, Peterson also cultivated a love of ragtime, jazz, and boogie-woogie music, earning him an early nickname: “Brown Bomber of the Boogie-Woogie.”
Fame came calling at fourteen when Peterson won a national competition hosted by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which earned him a weekly fifteen-minute radio slot. His early success led him to quit high school and begin a professional career in earnest. He joined trumpeter Johnny Holmes’ Orchestra for several years before forming a trio in 1945 which cut several boogie-woogie-style sides for RCA Victor Records. In the late 40s, Peterson began to get noticed, especially by American musicians visiting Canada, like Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie, who were impressed by the young pianist’s formidable musicianship and technical mastery.
Norman Granz’s influence
In 1949, Peterson appeared on the radar of jazz record producer and impresario Norman Granz, the mastermind behind the hugely successful Jazz At The Philharmonic (JATP) concerts that helped popularize modern jazz. During a trip to Montreal to organize a JATP event, Granz was traveling to the airport in a cab when he heard an intriguing piano player on the radio. Learning it was a live broadcast from a jazz club in the city, he urged the cab driver to take him there, where he discovered the pianist was Oscar Peterson. After the show, he offered the 24-year-old a slot in a forthcoming JATP concert in New York. Peterson accepted and made his US debut as a “surprise guest” at a packed Carnegie Hall performing alongside Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, and Coleman Hawkins, where Granz introduced him to the audience as “one of the coming giants of jazz.”
From that point, Peterson became a JATP stalwart. Under Granz’s mentorship and astute management, he quickly flourished, signing to the producer’s Clef label in 1950, where he cut a string of albums before following the producer to Verve Records, founded in 1956. At Verve, Peterson became a household name, living up to Granz’s prophecy that he would become a jazz giant. Although a stroke in 1993 at age 68 proved a major setback to his career, Peterson eventually recovered, and played and recorded until he died at 82 in 2007.
The signature numbers
No Peterson concert would be complete without a performance of “C-Jam Blues,” a well-loved Duke Ellington tune from 1942. The Canadian first recorded the number as an RCA single in 1945 but his most famous version came eighteen years later on his classic Verve album, Night Train. Though Peterson was renowned for his florid, Art Tatum-influenced playing, on the swinging “C-Jam Blues” propelled by Ray Brown’s fast-walking bass, he takes a more minimalist approach, simply stating the tune’s horn-like theme with one finger before branching out for a solo.
On the same album, Peterson married impeccable technique and emotional sensitivity in his delightfully delicate interpretation of Hoagy Carmichael’s nostalgic ballad “Georgia On My Mind,” a US No. 1 for R&B star Ray Charles in 1960.
The influence of classical pianist/composer Sergei Rachmaninoff can be felt in Peterson’s rhapsodic fleet-of-finger intro and outro to his 1950 version of Sarah Vaughan’s signature tune “Tenderly,” a duo performance with his long-serving double-bassist Ray Brown that evolves into a swinging groove.
Though Peterson was famed for his locomotive-style uptempo numbers highlighting his mind-blowing technical prowess, he was a skilled master of slower material, which allowed him to show a softer and more intimate side. His atmospheric version of “Blue And Sentimental” – a track made famous by Count Basie in 1938 – appeared on the pianist’s 1956 tribute to the jazz aristocrat (Oscar Peterson Plays Count Basie) and was given a delicious late-night feel emphasizing the tune’s blues roots.
Peterson also taps into his love of the blues on the gently simmering “Night Train,” an evocative nocturne that dispels the notion that the pianist valued technique over feeling. He played the track with a sense of subtlety, nuance, and restraint that was the antithesis of the showy keyboard pyrotechnics that brought him fame.
The collaborations
Almost everyone in the jazz world wanted to work with Oscar Peterson, such was his renown. His many collaborators over the years ranged from swing masters (Count Basie) and bebop deities (Dizzy Gillespie) to acclaimed arrangers (Nelson Riddle), classical violin maestros (Itzhak Perlman), French movie composers (Michel Legrand), and even, in his later years, leading lights of the contemporary postbop jazz scene (Roy Hargrove). One of Peterson’s notable early musical alliances was hooking up with tenor saxophonist Lester Young, who had made his name in the big band swing era. Peterson revealed his skill as Young’s accompanist on the 1954 album, Lester Young With The Oscar Peterson Trio, which contained the leisurely ballad “There Will Never Be Another You.”
Collaborations came thick and fast in the 1950s. In 1957, Peterson teamed up with the gravel-voiced Louis Armstrong for “Makin’ Whoopee,” taken from the LP Louis Armstrong Meets Oscar Peterson. Though 24 years Peterson’s senior, “Satchmo” established a deep musical rapport with the younger musician.
Two years later, Peterson enjoyed a fruitful jazz summit with tenor saxophone titan Ben Webster that he described as “a unique and joyful experience.” They combined their talents on the LP Ben Webster Meets Oscar Peterson. The standout track was “When Your Lover Has Gone,” where Webster’s gruff, breathy sax with its smoky sonorities floats above Peterson’s softly luminous chords.
Another horn player, St. Louis trumpeter and flugelhornist Clark Terry, featured on the 1965 album Oscar Peterson Trio + One. Peterson was in awe of Terry, describing him as having “amazing technique, astonishing breath control, prodigious imagination, and one of the most versatile and lovely sounds jazz has ever known.” Interestingly, on the album’s killer track, “Mumbles,” Terry chose to sing rather than play trumpet, improvising scat vocals over Peterson’s bluesy accompaniment.
It was inevitable that the “Maharajah of the Piano” should meet “The First Lady of Song,” Ella Fitzgerald, in the recording studio. Producer Granz had guided their careers since the late 40s but 1975’s Ella And Oscar was their first studio assignation where they had equal billing. (Previously, Peterson had recorded with Fitzgerald as a sideman). Though acclaimed for his flamboyant solos, Peterson showed an innate understanding of his role as an accompanist on the pair’s exquisite rendition of Burton Lane and Frank Loesser’s “I Hear Music,” a tune plucked from the 1940 Hollywood musical, Dancing On A Dime.
The pop covers
The arrival of Beatlemania in the 1960s triggered a pop and rock music tsunami that wounded and subsequently diminished jazz as a commercial force. But many jazz musicians, from instrumentalists like Peterson to vocalists such as Ella Fitzgerald, adapted to the situation by updating their repertoire by introducing pop material.
The international rise of the Brazilian bossa nova as a potent musical force in 1964 saw Peterson offer a jazz version of singer Astrud Gilberto’s Grammy-winning US chartbuster “The Girl from Ipanema,” which he reconfigured as a slinky groove that proved the perfect platform for his tasteful extemporizations. In 1967, Peterson gave a jazz makeover to another then-current pop hit of Brazilian origin: “Mas Que Nada,” Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66’s hit version of an uplifting Jorge Ben tune. It was one of eight Brazilian tunes featured on Peterson’s deceptively titled Soul Español album.
By the early 70s, after he had left Verve for the German M.P.S. label, Peterson, like many other jazz musicians, embraced The Beatles’ music. Motions And Emotions, his 1969 pop-oriented album with arrangements by Claus Ogerman, transformed “Eleanor Rigby” from a somber elegy into a finger-clicking slice of groovy lounge jazz augmented by glossy cinematic strings. His skill in recontextualizing pop material was also highlighted on the same album by a swinging revamp of Bobbie Gentry’s 1967 chart-topper “Ode To Billie Joe.”
The Songbook highlights
Norman Granz was the mastermind behind Peterson’s series of themed songbook albums in the mid-to-late 1950s, which the producer had successfully introduced via his other protege, Ella Fitzgerald. Focusing on the chief composers of The Great American Songbook – George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Richard Rodgers, and Duke Ellington – Granz discovered a formula that made both Fitzgerald and Peterson stars.
1959’s Oscar Peterson Plays The Richard Rodgers Songbook contained a dynamic reading of “Surrey With The Fringe On Top,” a song introduced to jazz audiences by another jazz pianist, Ahmad Jamal, a few years earlier. Peterson gave it an individualistic treatment defined by thick, harmonically rich chords and quicksilver right-hand melodies.
The second in his series of Verve songbook albums, 1959’s Oscar Peterson Plays The Cole Porter Songbook featured two timeless interpretations of jazz standards. The slow and stately “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye” spotlighted how Peterson’s delicate filigreed piano underlined the song’s emotional poignancy. In sharp contrast, a carefree arrangement of “Night & Day” was driven by a swing pulse weaponized by bassist Ray Brown and drummer Ed Thigpen’s rhythmic elan.
Also dating from 1959, Oscar Peterson Plays The George Gershwin Songbook contained two tunes taken from the composer’s iconic 1935 “folk opera,” Porgy & Bess: sublime versions of “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” and “Summertime,” both highlighting Peterson’s delicate touch and his sound’s crystalline beauty.
A staunch Duke Ellington fan, Peterson later became a friend though they never recorded an album together. The Canadian, however, recorded two tributes to the Washington DC composer; 1952’s Oscar Peterson Plays Duke Ellington, and its 1960 sequel, Oscar Peterson Plays the Duke Ellington Songbook. The chief highlight of the latter album was “Take The ‘A’ Train,” a propulsive trio groove whose verve encapsulated Peterson’s cherished musical values – playing with conviction, dynamism, and a joyful swinging pulse.
The late great Quincy Jones once described Peterson as “one of the most dangerous musicians to ever walk the planet,” jokily referring, of course, to the pianist’s awe-inspiring technique and formidable musical arsenal, which was said to unnerve other jazz pianists. While his piano playing inspired awe, off the bandstand, Peterson was a warm, well-read, and personable man who was no stranger to humility. Musically, though, he was a phenomenon whose nonpareil genius is revealed in the above selection of classic tracks. Together, they paint a vivid and well-rounded portrait of one of the greatest and best-loved pianists that ever lived.
