Oscar Peterson, a giant of jazz piano whose virtuoso technique and impeccable sense of swing made him one of the most popular figures in the genre for more than half a century, died of kidney failure Sunday in his home in Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto. He was 82.
"Oscar Peterson redefined swing for modern jazz pianists for the latter half of the 20th century," jazz pianist Herbie Hancock said. "I was dazzled by the precision of his playing. But it was primarily the groove that moved me about Oscar. The groove and the blues, but with the sophistication that I was used to from classical music."
Marian McPartland, a pianist who had known Mr. Peterson since the 1940s, called him "the finest technician that I have seen."
Mr. Peterson, who came to prominence playing with Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic tours, was the winner of eight Grammy awards, including one in 1997 for lifetime achievement. He is most celebrated for the two trios he led during the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s. The first featured bassist Ray Brown and guitarist Herb Ellis. The second included Brown and drummer Ed Thigpen. The trios achieved a level of musical interplay and chamber-jazz fluidity that, at their finest, rivaled the work of the Modern Jazz Quartet.
It was Mr. Peterson's prodigious gifts at the keyboard that were his greatest claim to musical fame. An imposing bear of a man, he stood over 6 feet tall, weighed considerably more than 200 pounds, and had hands that could span an octave and a half on the keyboard. Such physicality allowed him to summon up an enormous sound and stunning power. Yet he also could display dexterity, delicacy, and speed. As the singer Carmen McRae once said, "Oscar is my favorite because he encompasses everything."
There was another reason for McRae's enthusiasm. Surprisingly, for such a dynamic instrumentalist, Mr. Peterson could be a deft accompanist, most notably, perhaps, on the several recordings his trio made backing Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong in the 1950s. That Mr. Peterson occasionally performed as a vocalist added to his appreciation of the singer's art.
In his singing, as in the piano-bass-guitar configuration of his first trio, Mr. Peterson was following in the footsteps of Nat King Cole. Yet the foremost influence on Mr. Peterson, and the pianist he was most often compared to, was Art Tatum. That comparison was no small accolade, as Tatum is universally acknowledged as the nonpareil of the jazz keyboard. It is a mark of Mr. Peterson's own prowess that Tatum once told him, "After me, you're next."
Yet it is also a mark of Mr. Peterson's somewhat anomalous standing in jazz history that after him, there has been no next. He resembles in that regard his near-contemporary Errol Garner, an equally uncategorizable talent.
A school of one, Mr. Peterson assimilated elements of stride, boogie-woogie, swing, and bebop to form his distinctive style, but that style has left no legacy. His singularity is both tribute (Mr. Peterson's gifts really were that phenomenal) but also indictment, insofar as jazz predicates itself on an ongoing process of influence and filiation.
Mr. Peterson's contributions to the jazz tradition have been self-contained: no landmark recordings, no redefining - or redirecting - of the music, no widely taken up compositions. (His best-known composition is the 1964 "Canadiana Suite.")
As a result, Mr. Peterson's widespread popularity did not translate into high critical standing. Although Mr. Peterson won the annual Down Beat readers' poll for best pianist 13 times, he won the critics' poll only once, in 1950.
Famously hard-working, Mr. Peterson toured constantly and made hundreds of recordings. (In 1962, his trio produced no fewer than seven studio and four live albums.) So prolific an output, combined with Mr. Peterson's unquestionably bravura technique, led some critics to dismiss his playing as mechanical, shallow, or both.
Mr. Peterson's capacity for hard work was sorely tested in 1993, when he suffered a stroke during a weeklong engagement at a New York jazz club, the Blue Note. He finished out the week, yet realized he had lost the ability to play with his left hand.
"It was strange," Mr. Peterson said in a 1998 Los Angeles Times interview. "I don't remember any pain or any particular discomfort, other than the way the fingers on my left hand reacted."
It required an arduous regimen of rehabilitation, but Mr. Peterson resumed regular touring and recording two years later. The undiminished abilities of his right hand insured that only the closest listener might detect any limitations in his left.
The son of West Indian immigrants, Oscar Emmanuel Peterson was born on August 15, 1925, in Montreal. His father, Daniel, was a train porter and amateur organist who instilled in his children a passion for music. Mr. Peterson's mother, Kathleen, was a homemaker.
Mr. Peterson started playing trumpet at 5, but when he came down with tuberculosis, he was told to give up the instrument. He turned to piano and studied for a year at the Montreal Conservatory. "I was drawn to classical music, of course, but I liked the idea of creating something new each time I sat down at the keyboard," he said in the Times interview.
Winning a radio talent contest at 15, Mr. Peterson began playing with a popular Canadian big band, the Johnny Holmes Orchestra. Although two leading American bandleaders, Count Basie and Jimmie Lunceford, urged Mr. Peterson to take his career to the United States, he demurred.
All that changed one night in 1949. Granz, the top jazz impresario of his day, was taking a taxi to the Montreal airport when he heard on the car radio a live broadcast from a local club featuring Mr. Peterson's trio. He told the driver to forget about the airport and take him to the club. He signed Mr. Peterson on the spot.
Later that year, Mr. Peterson made his Carnegie Hall debut as part of a Jazz at the Philharmonic program. His rendition of "I Only Have Eyes for You" earned a standing ovation and, according to Down Beat, stopped the concert "dead cold in its tracks." He joined Jazz at the Philharmonic tours the following year, holding his own with such luminaries as Ben Webster, Roy Eldridge, and Coleman Hawkins.
In 1959, Mr. Peterson founded the Advanced School of Contemporary Music in Toronto. The school closed in 1963, but Mr. Peterson retained an interest in jazz education. He provided transcriptions of many of his solos on his website, oscarpeterson.com. In 1982, the Berklee College of Music in Boston founded the Oscar Peterson Scholarship.
Mr. Peterson composed the score to Woody Allen's film "Play It Again, Sam," in 1972. He published his autobiography, "A Jazz Odyssey," in 2002. In 2005, Canada Post made him the first living Canadian to be honored with a postage stamp.
Mr. Peterson leaves his wife, Kelly, and daughter, Celine.
No immediate plans for a memorial were announced.
Material from the Associated Press and Los Angeles Times was used in this obituary.
