Suppose you woke up at some deep, dark hour to find yourself floating above your bed, your eyes open just enough to understand that your whole bedroom has somehow broken from the pull and lull of gravity. After feeling around and looking to make sure you weren’t dreaming, you might wonder if during sleep you’d been beamed to some stress-free, hate-free planet. Or, noting your rising sense of elation, you might conclude that you’re in love.

As fanciful as this proposal may sound, it also happens to be the very fantasy we allow ourselves each time we quiet down and listen to the words of a love song—and most of our ballads and poems still sing and celebrate love in its infinite complexity. Whether you know or don’t know the lyrics to some of the instantly familiar-sounding standards Oscar Peterson’s ensembles perform on this compilation, the titles alone will tell you the emotional and mental environment you’ve reached.

Listen to the way Peterson aids and abets the persuasive singer Bill Henderson, who sounds as though he isn’t so much singing as speaking directly to a lover. Listen to Peterson himself sing. Even though he recorded “Sweet Lorraine” in affectionate tribute to Nat King Cole, Peterson brings his own passion to Cliff Burwell and Mitchell Parish’s classic. Much is made of Peterson’s debt to Art Tatum, but I have always heard in Peterson’s piano style the abiding influence of Nat Cole, who was a brilliant player who also shared the Tatum legacy. Like Tatum and like Cole, Oscar Peterson can swing at any tempo. This slow, driving compilation of ballads and standards captures and documents Peterson’s artistry at many stages of his performing career, a career that spans pop, swing, boogie-woogie, bop, and virtually every vein of late 20^th century music. After producer Norman Granz discovered him in 1949, Peterson toured the world with Granz’s popular Jazz at the Philharmonic troupes. He then formed the first of his historic trios, the first of which included bassist Ray Brown and guitarist Herb Ellis.

Long acclaimed as one of jazz’s all-time great players, Oscar Peterson was born in Montréal in 1925. At six he began studying classical piano. His tasteful reference to J.S. Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” at the close of Guy Woods and Robert Mellin’s “My One and Only Love” makes me wonder if this jazz great isn’t telling us something about the depth and breadth of love in its seemingly infinite facets: intimate, creative, and spiritual.

Imagination, fantasy, yearning, transcendence—all of these processes and mind-states kick in when we listen to love songs. The song titles themselves on this tender compilation suggest the reach and magnitude of love: “The Man I Love,” “Prelude to a Kiss,” “I’m a Fool to Want You,” “Over the Rainbow.” Even somewhat lesser known titles such as vibraphonist Milt Jackson’s “Heartstrings,” or Leonard Bernstein’s “Somewhere”—the West Side Story showpiece that continues to invite jazz interpretations—suggest that often we yearn above or beyond the everyday variety of romantic love.

Many years ago in Western Australia, it was my delight to catch the Oscar Peterson Trio in concert with special guest: guitarist Joe Pass. The venue was the annual Perth Festival. As always Peterson and his collaborators played superbly. Afterwards, invited to dine with the musicians, I felt uncool. I couldn’t take my eyes or ears off of cigar-chomping Joe Pass, who had brought his acoustic guitar to dinner and was absorbed in practicing at table until the waiter brought our suppers. Apparently used to the guitarist’s habits, Mr. Peterson, his grade school-age son, bassist Neils Henning Ørsted Pedersen and drummer Martin Drew didn’t so much as blink at Pass. “He often does that,” one of them told me. “He loves it.”

Once our orders arrived and Pass put away his instrument, I told him how much I’d always treasured his recordings. Watching and listening to me compliment the guitarist, Oscar Peterson shot me a big-eyed glance from his seat at the head of the table. To my mind the look on his face was plain and all too clear. So if you think Joe is so great, it seemed to say, then what must you think of me?

Relishing such an invitation to speak meaningfully to one of jazz history’s greatest pianists, I turned at once to the master. “Of course, Mr. Peterson,” I said, “I’ve always loved your work. And that goes all the way back to some of those early albums you made. We loved it, too, when you sang. The young jazz kids I hung with around Detroit all thought you must’ve admired Nat King Cole.”

Decades later, the storyteller in me still hears Peterson telling me how much he loved and appreciated Cole’s brilliance as both a vocalist and pianist.

But the truth-haunted poet in me is obliged to report that all Peterson said was, “Thank you. I thank you. I love Nat. Who doesn’t? Tell me, what brings you way over here to Perth? Are you a journalist?”

“No,” I explained. “Every two years they feature a guest American poet.”

Peterson’s soulful eyes widened. “And this year they invited you? How wonderful. Congratulations. What do you mostly write about?”

“Love,” I said.

“That’s what we’re really all about, isn’t it?” This said, Peterson smiled politely again, then turned his quiet gaze to the boy.

On that star-crammed, semi-tropical night most of Peterson’s attention seemed focused on his young son. I could see and feel the loving space they had roped off for themselves. Ørsted Pedersen, Drew, Joe Pass and I rested outside their father-son loop. Drawn together by profession, chance and timing, but also by a love of jazz (not to mention the post-gig hunger we shared), we glowed in the glamour of that moment, which has melted down into yet another cinematic dream whose soundtrack you may think you hold in your hand, but, really, its key hides deep up inside you.

Al Young
Liner notes for the 2004 Verve compilation Oscar Peterson for Lovers.

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