Mr. Peterson recorded prolifically. In one three-year period, from 1950 to 1952, he released 25 albums, and he continued to record frequently throughout his life.
The musicians with whom Mr. Peterson played would fill an encyclopedia of jazz history. The list includes trumpeters Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, Clark Terry and Dizzy Gillespie; guitarists Barney Kessel, Herb Ellis and Joe Pass; and bassist Ray Brown.
His accomplishments include fourteen Grammy awards, including a lifetime achievement award, and sixteen honorary degrees. He was the first living person other than a reigning monarch to be honored with a commemorative stamp by Canada Post.
I am listening to recordings that Mr. Peterson made in 1973, a year when many jazz musicians were exploring new sounds. By 1973, Joe Zawinul, who had recorded with Duke Ellington’s tenor saxophonist Ben Webster ten years earlier, was playing synthesizers in Weather Report; Chick Corea, who had played with Sarah Vaughn, Stan Getz and Blue Mitchell, had formed Return to Forever; and Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis’ former pianist, had recorded Head Hunters. Jazz was changing.
Oscar Peterson did not change. He preferred to play the music of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, and Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II.
The album I am listening to features violinist Stephane Grappelli, who was making records in France with Django Reinhardt in 1934, before Mr. Peterson’s tenth birthday. The songs that Mr. Peterson recorded with Grappelli—“Autumn Leaves,” “My Heart Stood Still,” “My One and Only Love”—have been recorded countless times, but Mr. Peterson’s recordings with Mr. Grappelli sound like none of the others. I have not found a record on which Mr. Peterson plays more exuberantly and, more than thirty years later, it is still a pleasure to hear.
Among Mr. Peterson’s other recordings are collections of songs by Cole Porter, George Gershwin and Irving Berlin.
Oscar Peterson chose to play good songs and played them extraordinarily well. That is not a bad way to spend a life, and his was a life worth remembering.
