Canadian world renowned pianist Oscar Peterson died late on Sunday due to kidney failure at age 82.
Peterson was born on August 15, 1925, the fourth of five children of a Canadian Pacific Railway porter who played piano. The family lived in Little Burgundy, a black enclave in Montreal, where Peterson's elder sister, Daisy, gave her siblings their first piano lessons.
Musicians Teddy Wilson and Nat "King" Cole were among early influences. When Peterson was a teenager his father played him a recording of Art Tatum -- the lightning-fast pianist to whom Peterson would later be compared -- which intimidated him so much he stayed away from the piano for a month.
At 14, he began performing for radio and played in a school band that included trumpeter Maynard Ferguson.
His career on the rise, Peterson asked his father if he could drop out of school. The elder Peterson said he would not "let him leave high school to be a jazz piano player. You have to be the best, there is no second best."
He took it to heart.
"When I started I had great belief, and there were quite a few bruises and disappointments along the way, but I never lost the belief," he told Reuters in 1999.
Peterson famously got his big break in the late 1940s when impresario and record producer Norman Granz was in a taxi en route to the Montreal airport, with the radio tuned to a live show featuring Peterson's trio. Granz demanded the cabbie make a beeline to the nightclub, where he met Peterson. (source: Yahoo)
Musicians Teddy Wilson and Nat "King" Cole were among early influences. When Peterson was a teenager his father played him a recording of Art Tatum -- the lightning-fast pianist to whom Peterson would later be compared -- which intimidated him so much he stayed away from the piano for a month.
At 14, he began performing for radio and played in a school band that included trumpeter Maynard Ferguson.
His career on the rise, Peterson asked his father if he could drop out of school. The elder Peterson said he would not "let him leave high school to be a jazz piano player. You have to be the best, there is no second best."
He took it to heart.
"When I started I had great belief, and there were quite a few bruises and disappointments along the way, but I never lost the belief," he told Reuters in 1999.
Peterson famously got his big break in the late 1940s when impresario and record producer Norman Granz was in a taxi en route to the Montreal airport, with the radio tuned to a live show featuring Peterson's trio. Granz demanded the cabbie make a beeline to the nightclub, where he met Peterson. (source: Yahoo)
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