02/05/2019
Remembering a legend-
I often walk by a fading wall mural of one of Canada’s top jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, who has won eight Grammy Awards and was known as the ‘man with four hands’ or the ‘Brown Bomber of Boogie-Woogie’ in his heyday.
Peterson’s portrait stands out this Black History Month among local marathoner Jerome Drayton and Olympic figure skater, Petra Burka, who also grace an Etobicoke wall of fame.
Peterson, who died in December 2007 at the age of 82, was born in Montreal but later moved to Toronto, then Mississauga and was a Chancellor of York University from 1991 to 1994.
Naturally talented, in 1940, at the age of 14, Peterson won a music competition organized by the CBC. Soon after he dropped out of high school and began playing with in a band with famed Canadian bandleader Maynard Ferguson.
A professional pianist, he starred in a weekly radio show and played gigs at hotels and music halls. In his teens he was a member of the Johnny Holmes Orchestra. He was part of a trio from 1945 to 1949 and recorded for Victor Records.
“He gravitated toward boogie-woogie and swing with a particular fondness for Nat King Cole and Teddy Wilson,” music writers said at the time. “By the time he was in his 20s, he had developed a reputation as a technically brilliant and melodically inventive pianist.”
And it wasn’t always easy for Peterson, as he was the only Black member of the Orchestra, which toured Canada and the U.S.
He would recall playing in the U.S. south when he, like other Blacks, would not be served in the same hotels and restaurants as the white musicians.
“Many times they would bring food out to him as he sat in the band’s bus,” the musicians would recall.
Peterson would never forget how his manager ‘stood up’ to a gun-toting southern policeman who wanted to stop the trio from using "whites-only" taxis.
But he was raised in Montreal’s Little Burgundy area, which was a poor Black neighbourhood, and knew where he stood.
His father, Daniel, was an amateur trumpeter and pianist, and one of his first music teachers, and his sister Daisy taught him classical piano.
Daniel, who worked as a sleeping car porter for the Canadian Pacific Railway, arrived in Canada from the British Virgin Islands and had worked as a boatswain on a merchant ship. His mom, Kathleen Olivia John, was from St. Kitts, and worked as a cook and housekeeper.
Their son, who was one of five children, had a good work ethic and was among the most prolific stars in jazz history. From the 1950s until his death, he released sometimes four or five albums a year, toured Europe and Japan frequently and became a big draw at jazz festivals.
Peterson was a favorite in his Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts in the 1940s and ’50s and played alongside giants like Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Roy Eldridge, Nat King Cole, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald.
He also appeared on more than 200 albums by other artists, including Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong, who called him “the man with four hands.”
In 1964 he recorded “The Canadiana Suite,” a work written for his homeland; he later wrote “African Suite” and “A Royal Wedding Suite,” for the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.
In later years, Peterson taught piano and improvisation in Toronto and headed the Advanced School of Contemporary Music for five years.
He also mentored the York University jazz program and was the Chancellor of the university for three years in the early 1990s.
Peterson was frequently invited to perform for heads of state, including Queen Elizabeth II and President Richard M. Nixon. In 2005 he became the first living person other than a reigning monarch to obtain a commemorative stamp in Canada.
He was an Officer and then Companion of the Order of Canada and an Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters in France.
