Oscar Peterson

Oscar Peterson (1925-2007) grew up in Montreal with rigorous classical training and won a national Canadian radio contest at fourteen. Impresario Norman Granz heard him in a Montreal club and put him on stage at Carnegie Hall in 1949; he toured and recorded relentlessly for the next half century.

His trios, first with Ray Brown and Herb Ellis, later with Ed Thigpen, set the bar for swinging precision. Peterson combined Tatum-level technique with a deep blues feeling: thundering runs in both hands, riff-driven climaxes and a beat that never wavered. Duke Ellington called him the Maharaja of the keyboard.

He recorded more than 200 albums and won eight Grammy awards, including one for lifetime achievement. After a stroke in 1993 weakened his left hand, he kept performing, swinging as hard with eight fingers as most pianists do with ten.