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Oscar Peterson: The Oscar Peterson Trio at Baker's Keyboard Lounge
by Mike Jurkovic
If any one player fills a soul to the brim with unbridled joy, Oscar Peterson--his whole 'tude, his smile, his swing--is that grand soul and our grand fortune. Put on any of Peterson's archival releases-- Around the World, Con Alma: The Oscar Petersen Trio--Live In Lugano, 1964, or City Lights: Live in Munich 1994 (Two Lions Records/Mack Avenue, 2025, 2022, 2023)--and it becomes spontaneously apparent that the man brought the JOY every day to every stage. It was his life ...
Continue ReadingOscar Peterson Trio: The Oscar Peterson Trio at Baker's Keyboard Lounge
by Pierre Giroux
There are live recordings that capture an engagement, and others that seem to revive an entirely vanished room. This newly unearthed Verve Records release from Detroit's Baker's Keyboard Lounge, recorded over five sets in August 1960, clearly falls into the latter category. More than just a historical curiosity, it reveals atmosphere, temperament, and mastery. The Oscar Peterson trio at full strength in a venue that knew how to listen, playing as if elegance and fire were not mutually exclusive virtues ...
Continue ReadingTeddy Edwards / Howard McGhee: Together Again!!!!
by Richard J Salvucci
Howard McGhee was one of the cats present at the creation, when bop became a thing. His life embodied a classic redemption story, complete with death (metaphorically) by drugs, years in exile and finally, by dint of his own struggles and a timely gig with Woody Herman, resurrection. While he had been widely admired and respected in the late 1940s as a pioneering trumpeter, the unspoken judgment was that it was his misfortune to come to prominence when Dizzy Gillespie ...
Continue ReadingOscar Peterson: Con Alma
by Chris May
To borrow Duke Ellington's description of Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson was born poor, died rich and never hurt anyone along the way. He also brought joy to untold numbers of people. But, truth to tell, his style was the twentieth-century equivalent of modern day AI-produced generative music. Sit Peterson down at a piano, progamme him (as in give him a tune to play), and press Go: a torrent of technique poured out. Trouble is, Peterson's pianism was ...
Continue ReadingThe Oscar Peterson Trio: Con Alma: The Oscar Peterson Trio Live in Lugano, 1964
by Mike Jurkovic
Was there ever a more generous player than Oscar Peterson? A man who, by simply doing the thing he most loved and thrilled to do, which was make people feel better way down deep in their bones, sat at his piano and made the world grateful? Rekindled that spark--of imagination, of potential, of better--just by running his hands along the eighty-eights and instigating his soul mates, bassist Ray Brown and drummer Ed Thigpen to do the same. That ...
Continue ReadingDorothy Ashby: With Strings Attached, 1957-1965
by John Chacona
Imagine if Sidney Bechet, Charlie Christian and Jimmy Smith were barely remembered and recordings of their music were long unavailable and known only on the geekiest corners of Discogs. That is essentially the status of harpist Dorothy Ashby. Like the three figures cited above, Ashby essentially created a language for her chosen instrument, the harp, where virtually none has existed before and established it as a legitimate and expressive vehicle for jazz improvisation at the highest level. Just how brilliantly ...
Continue ReadingOscar Peterson: Exclusively For My Friends
by Bruce Lindsay
An 8-CD set of recordings from the great Oscar Peterson, beautifully recorded, sumptuously packaged and accompanied by a 60-page booklet full of informative writing: Exclusively For My Friends is a treat for ears and eyes. All of the recordings on this set were made between 1963 and 1971. The sessions took place in the home of producer and MPS Records owner Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer in Germany's Black Forest--Peterson and Brunner-Schwer were friends and the pianist often visited the label owner's ...
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