One of the most influential players of jazz that the world has known, Oscar Emmanuel Peterson was born on the 15th of August, 1925 in Little Burgundy, Montreal. His living environment was one imbibed with jazz music since lived in a locality where most of the people were African Americans. When just five years old, he was taught the piano and the trumpet. After being affected with tuberculosis a couple of years later, he dropped the trumpet and turned all his efforts towards the piano.
His main teacher these years, was his self taught father who was a porter working with Canadian Pacific Railways. He taught Oscar and his four brothers all that he garnered while playing the piano when he was in the merchant marine. His sister brought to his attention and taught him classical music.
Since starting to play the piano, Oscar made sure he got his basics right he would faithfully practice his scales and classical etudes daily – a habit which gave him a good grounding in the basics which in his later years contributed to a large part of his mastery over the piano. One of his piano teachers in his early years was Paul De Marky who also like his sister imparted lessons on classical piano playing to Oscar.
He started to catch onto traditional jazz recordings which prompted him to learn many ragtimes and boogie-woogie tunes of his time. This ability of his earned him the tag “The Brown Bomber of the Boogie-Woogie”. By the time he was nine years old, his playing was as mature as any other professional. He spent anywhere between four and six hours every day perfecting himself at the piano – a habit he kept when he was long into his professional career.
When he was 14 years old, he took part in a nation-wide competition organized by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in which he emerged the winner. This marked the beginning of his professional career. His first permanent gig was playing for a once a week show on the radio. He also played at hotels and music halls.
The inspiration for his style of playing came from most of the jazz musicians whom any pianist at the time idolized – Nat King Cole, Teddy Wilson, James P Johnson and Art Tatum. The tables turned later in his career when Art Tatum was compared to him in his later years of success. His first hearing of an Art Tatum piece was when his father played Tiger Rag for him. After hearing it, he almost lost faith in his abilities to play the piano as well as he could. He admitted later that he was intimidated by Art Tatum’s technique and that it made him decide to be humble at his own ability to play. Oscar Peterson ended up becoming good friends with Tatum eventually but he never let go of the awe he was in of the man. He rarely ever played the piano when Tatum was around.
Not only was he mesmerized by Tatum’s music, he also looked up to the pianists that Tatum looked up to as he started playing. His work had a lot of inspiration and note for note picked up sections from some of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s music. His work with his trio -the Oscar Patterson Trio – with Herb Ellis on guitar and Ellis Brown on bass had many such references.
His influences extend toward classical music which he has attributed to his sister Daisy Sweeney. The discipline that it involved was one of the key skills he picked up when he started learning piano from her.
Peterson found a good friend and collaborator in Norman Granz. Granz discovered him when he listening to Peterson playing at a club via a live radio broadcast. He was traveling in a taxi at the time. Upon hearing him play, he asked the driver to take him straight away to the club where Oscar Peterson was playing.
Granz got him a gig at Carnegie Hall as a part of his Jazz at the Philharmonic series. From then on, Granz served as his manager. Granz was behind Peterson in the fight against segregation. He stood in between the trio and a police who was trying to stop them from traveling in “white only” taxis.
Peterson was plagued with health problems throughout his life. He had arthritis to the extent that he could not button his own shirt. He was too heavy for his size which affected his mobility. But physical problems or not, history will certainly record Oscar Peterson as being one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time.
By: Duane Shinn
The Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame is located in the historic Carver Theater on 4th Avenue Business District in Birmingham, Alabama. The museum is in the Civil Rights District at 1631 4th Avenue North, in Birmingham, Alabama. Admission is free, and the hours are 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Sunday.
The Carver Theatre is a popular spot for local jazz artists. They have been host to jazz legends like Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton. The Carver Theatre is open to the very best in entertainment that includes anything from theatrical performances to jazz jam sessions to swing dance classes.
The Carver Theatre for the Performing Arts was built in 1935. The present theatre includes 1,300 of the latest model theatre chairs and the newest development in air conditioning, sound, and projection. It was also one of several theatres in the Fourth Avenue area that offers first-run movies to African-Americans.
In 1990, the City of Birmingham began renovation of the Carver Theatre as a performing arts theatre and the new home of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame and museum. It now operates as a non-profit, multi-use community theatre, which is open for bookings by local and national groups.
The art-deco museum is a place for entertainment as well as honoring great jazz artists with ties to the state of Alabama. Exhibits of accomplished jazz artists include:
o Nat King Cole
o Duke Ellington
o Lionel Hampton
o Erskine Hawkins
Visitors of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame travel from the beginnings of boogie woogie with Clarence “Pinetop” Smith to the jazz space journeys of Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Space Orchestra.
If you add the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame to your vacations ideas and become a visitor you will have a chance to get lost in Alabama’s rich jazz heritage. There are more than 2,200-square-feet of exhibits.
What you will see as parts of these vacation ideas include:
o Priceless jazz memorabilia: Paintings, quilts, instruments and the personal effects of artists like Ella Fitzgerald and W.C. Handy
The Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame welcomes tour groups of any size. Their hours are Tuesday through Saturday 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Guided Tours are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday from 10:00a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and on Saturday after 1:00 p.m. The Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame is closed Sunday and Monday. Admission is $2 per person for the self-guided tour and $3 per person for a guided tour.
If you bring a large tour group, look forward to both a tour and a showing of “Jazz in the Magic City.” “Jazz in the City” is a jazz documentary outlining the Jazz progression in Birmingham, Alabama.
For more information about the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame tours call 205-254-2731. You might want to add this to your vacation ideas as well.
Who does the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame honor? Inductees include:
o Performers
o Promoters
o Music publishing and recording leaders
o Broadcasters and others have had a significant impact on jazz music.
o Inductees into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame must also have been born in the state of Alabama or spent a considerable amount of time in Alabama developing, producing and influencing jazz.
If you are a lover of jazz music, you might want to add the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame to your list of vacation ideas.
Source: Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in Birmingham, Alabama
Important Disclaimer: The URL address in the resource box of this article is not associated with the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame. This article and the web site is a resource to help you formulate vacation ideas.
This article is FREE to publish with the resource box.
Jazz Piano is an integral part of jazz idiom since it has been incepted in both ensemble and solo settings. Due to its harmonic and melodic nature, the instrument is quite important for understanding the jazz arranging and theory. Along with a jazz guitar, a jazz piano is also one of those instruments of jazz combo which may be played with chords as with a trumpet or saxophone.
If you are into practice jazz piano you must know about jazz practice tool where chords are the primary substance in the instrument, and the second skill you will have to learn is how to play jazz piano with swing rhythm. Then is the skill of improvisation which requires you to make something on the spot. This is a skill that requires tremendous skills and extreme knowledge of the piano.
Earlier, the jazz piano used to be heavily stride technique and it was often played solo. Historically influential promoters of early piano include Earl Hines, Jelly Roll Morton, Teddy Wilson and Art Tatum. The playing style of Mary Lou Williams, Wilie Smith and James P. Johnson shaped the history of jazz piano. The 1950s and the 1960s were the golden age of the jazz which created many important and influential jazz piano players. These powerful players included Red Garland, Ahmad Jamal, Don Pullen, Bud Powell, Cecil Taylor and Horace Silver. The jazz pianists require an exclusive skills set and the piano’s extended range as a playing instrument offers the solo players an exhaustive variety of choices. One can use bass register for playing a pattern of ostinato such as that of a melodious counterline or boogie woogie emulating the playing of upright bass. Stride piano is a style of playing in which the left hand of the player changes positions rapidly while he plays notes in bass register and the chords in tenor register. This can also be done in a more syncopated variant.
Bill Evans sat at the front line of new generation players who emerged in 1960s including Chick Corea, John Taylor, Dave Brubeck and Keith Jarrett. Today, the popular figures in the field of jazz piano include Bill Charlap, Brad Mehldau, Jacky Terrasson, Danilo Perez and Geoffrey Keezer.
By: Akhila Choudhary