– Oscar Peterson Trio with Coleman Hawkins – Live at Funkhaus, Hannover – October 1967 – NDR –
A visit to North German Radio’s Funkhaus in Hannover for a radio concert by the Oscar Peterson trio with special guest star Coleman Hawkins – all recorded on October 1967 and broadcast by NDR in Hannover.
A few words via the Canadian Encyclopedia:
Oscar Peterson emerged as a celebrity in Montreal’s music scene in the early 1940s. He dropped out of high school at age 17 to play as a featured soloist in Johnny Holmes’s popular (and otherwise white) dance band from 1943 to 1947. Peterson’s father was skeptical of letting his son leave school to pursue a career in music. He reportedly told Oscar, “If you’re going to go out there and be a piano player, don’t just be another one. Be the best.”
Peterson made his first recordings for RCA Victor in March 1945. These early releases, notably “I Got Rhythm” and “The Sheik of Araby,” reveal the talent for boogie-woogie that earned him the nickname “the brown bomber of boogie-woogie.” They also reveal the extraordinary technique that would characterize his playing throughout his career. Peterson made sixteen 78s (32 songs in total) for RCA Victor between 1945 and 1949, The last of these suggest the influence of bebop. These songs were compiled on CD by BMG France in 1994; they were repackaged by BMG Canada in 1996 as The Complete Young Oscar Peterson (1945–1949).
Peterson’s influence on his fellow musicians is difficult to estimate. His extraordinary level of skill made his playing difficult to emulate directly, as did his lack of affiliation with a particular style or idiom. However, he was an early inspiration to many pianists. Herbie Hancock once wrote, “Oscar Peterson redefined swing for modern jazz pianists for the latter half of the 20th century… I consider him the major influence that formed my roots in jazz piano playing. He mastered the balance between technique, hard blues grooving, and tenderness.” Nanaimo, BC, native Diana Krall once called Peterson “the reason I became a jazz pianist. In my high school yearbook it says that my goal is to become a jazz pianist like Oscar Peterson.”
Coleman Hawkins didn’t invent the saxophone, of course, but he was responsible for creating the concept of the modern saxophone player as a star soloist. Before Hawkins arrived on the scene in the late 1920s, the saxophone – patented by its inventor, Belgian musician Adolphe Sax in 1846 – was deemed a novelty instrument. It had been used occasionally in classical music – the 19th-century French composer Hector Berlioz was partial to its resonant sound – but in popular music prior to 1925, the saxophone was rarely heard. When it was used, it was employed mainly to supply low-frequency mooing noises and comic, flatulence-like sound effects. In short, it wasn’t taken seriously. And there certainly wasn’t a lineage of great players who could be role models to younger, aspiring musicians. Coleman Hawkins permanently changed the perception of the saxophone; from one of ridicule to intense desirability.
Dive in and relax.
