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The Hindu : It must have been around 1990, when I hadn’t heard all that much jazz, that I became aware of Oscar Peterson. The album was “Oscar Peterson Plays Jazz Standards”, and the first track, “Swingin’ till the Girls Come Home”, stunned me with the speed and dexterity with which Peterson’s nimble fingers ran across the piano keys.I later heard Peterson described by a BBC jazz presenter as the man who sounds as if he has 22 fingers. Only Peterson came close to Art Tatum, whom he adulated, a man who literally sounded like two pianists. In fact, some critics thought he played too many notes, but he could make each note count and sound just right.Peterson was always in awe of Tatum from the time his father brought home a record of Tatum’s to challenge him. In fact, he once stopped playing at a private party when Tatum walked in. Apart from Tatum, one of his early influences was Nat King Cole, who was thought a talented jazz pianist before he found success as a pop singer.Peterson was born to black West Indian parents in 1925 in Canada, where he died of kidney failure on December 23 aged 82. Although he won a talent contest at 14 and started gaining recognition, he faced some racial bias. Later, when he moved to the USA, he encountered a different bias: Americans had difficulty acknowledging how good a Canadian jazz artist could be.Ultimately his prodigious ability won through. In 1949 he became a fixture in the record producer Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) series of concert tours. Granz, who also founded Verve records, made him the pianist of choice accompanying a variety of jazz luminaries on this renowned label.Peterson became one of the busiest pianists in all jazz. He had two parallel career tracks going in the 1950s and 1960s. On the one hand he led a…More