Surprised no thread had been started about this ... Farewell to the greatest piano player who ever lived. As a pianist, you listen to this guy play for 10 seconds and then you immediately realize that there is no way in hell you'll ever be even remotely close to even dreaming about being a tenth as good as he was. He was simply superhuman. <object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/4mJ8lHRVWY0&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/4mJ8lHRVWY0&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object> <object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_rn6AEVXpeo&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_rn6AEVXpeo&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>
I thought about starting a thread but didn't know if anybody here cared or even knew who Oscar Peterson way. I'll relay a little story I've posted on a few other sites. In college, I was hanging out with a bass player in Austin before a gig. We were listening to the Oscar Peterson Trio in his SUV. At the time, even though I knew who he was, I couldn't identify him by listening alone. I asked the bassist who it was and he said 'The Oscar Peterson Trio, or as I like to call it 'How To Swing''. Damn, was he right. Oscar got a lot of credit for his virtuosity and being able to play fluidly at impossible tempos, but that dude could lay back and swing harder than anyone who has ever lived. He was one bad mother****er. FYI, legendary jazz saxophonist Frank Morgan died on December 14.
That was what was so crazy about Oscar -- no matter what the tempo was or how crazy his runs were, he always made it look so easy.
I own close to 1,000 jazz albums. Of all those, 2 really stick out as swinging the hardest. One is Hank Mobley's Soul Station with the rhythm section made up of Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, and Art Blakey. The other is Sonny Stitt Sits In With the Oscar Peterson Trio with Ray Brown on bass and Ed Thigpen drums. I'm a huge Sonny Stitt fan and he never sounded better than he did on that album backed up by the OP3.
This is when he was old... imagine him at the top of his game... AWE-SOME! <object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8EFwdTgLVf0&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8EFwdTgLVf0&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>
