As over- and misused adjectives go, ‘epic’ currently receives something of a battering, yet it’s an appropriate description of Oscar Peterson’s 60-year career. A large, imposing man with an expansive range (Duke Ellington dubbed him the “Maharaja of the keyboard”), he became the most celebrated of all jazz piano players. Millions of TV viewers recognised an engaging presenter who duetted with the likes of Count Basie and Andre Previn. Jazz aristocrats like Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, Ben Webster, Charlie Parker and Stan Getz regarded him as a superlative accompanist. And, in countries all across the globe, concert hall audiences hailed him a dazzling virtuoso with ferocious technique and a monumental ability to swing.
On this particular May evening in Lugano, Peterson was flanked by a formidable and flawless pair: bass player Ray Brown and drummer Ed Thigpen, two jazz legends equally determined to create a flawless musical impression. They shared plenty of form. Working together between 1959 and 1965, they’d made some 35 albums. In Peterson’s own words: “in addition to our trio rehearsals…Ray would call his own rehearsals in his or Ed’s room and they would simply practice ‘time’, creating a flexible and multi-faceted rhythmical language they could apply to any musical statement I might make and enhance any direction I might choose. In short, they practiced ‘all the possibles’.” If you want evidence, it’s all here in the trio’s finely honed and tightly knit performance. Seamless stuff.
The album opens gently with Bill Evans’ lilting Waltz For Debby, initially as a duet for piano and bass, drums holding back. Peterson handles the treble end of the piano as gently as an expert inspecting Meissen porcelain, interweaving with Brown’s confident bassline, eventually shifting the rhythmic pulse into a muscular swinging ¾ time. Frequently voted ‘No. 1 bass player’ in jazz polls, Brown’s precise articulation and resonance are genuinely awesome.
Guy Woods and Robert Mellin composed the romantic ballad My One And Only Love and Frank Sinatra made it famous (but never forget the moving version by Johnny Hartman with John Coltrane). Peterson chooses to take it at walking pace, flamboyantly ornamented in the Tatumesque manner, yet always leaning on Brown’s stalwart bass support and even inserting a lengthy strain from Someone to Watch Over Me plus a cheeky interpolation of J. S. Bach to close.
As a youthful prodigy, Peterson built his reputation on up-tempo boogie-woogie and obviously relishes a lusty 12-bar blues. He confidently dials up tempo and temperature on Blues For My Landlady (dedicated to Peterson’s friend, Chicago pianist and singer, Audrey Morris), plunging hard into an intense unaccompanied intro, flicking a passing reference to a lick from High Society before the rest of the trio joins him in the romp. Both Brown and Thigpen have generous opportunity for solo comment. Ms Morris must have been one hell of a chum.
Dizzy Gillespie’s Latinate Con Alma contains snares for the unwary with a key change every couple of bars. But this trio vaults the challenge with sweeping waves of fat piano chords over sturdy double bass figures until Peterson unleashes an ecstatic staccato passage before a series of magic tricks involving the entire keyboard. As though they were one musician, the trio busies itself with an attractive descending phrase before ending on a dramatic high. Phew.
When Richard Rodgers and Lawrence Hart wrote I Could Write A Book for the 1940 musical Pal Joey they could never have imagined their song sparking a high-velocity, tearaway version (with yet more echoes of High Society), a tour-de-force reminding us mortals that musical giants once stomped across the earth.
The album’s final track is the heretical showstopper from Porgy and Bess, George and Ira Gershwin and Dorothy and Dubose Heyward’s It Ain’t Necessarily So. Over a sprightly tempo, the trio astonishes with its precision and breathtaking ensemble work. The ravishing finale, a fusing of bass strings and piano keys, must have left a gasping audience in a state of wonder.
RSI Radiotelevisione svizzera were responsible for the precise recording back in the 60s and Blaise Favre took charge of remixing and mastering. Kelly Peterson, Oscar’s widow, is ensuring that his legacy will endure. And so it should.
Oscar Peterson, piano; Ray Brown, bass; Ed Thigpen, drums. Recorded live at Teatro Apollo, Lugano, Switzerland, May 26, 1964.
