Oscar Peterson Live at Some German City

Koko: I know what you're thinking, but I swear, he isn't Sambo; he just really likes that piano. By listening to jazz, I'm forced to affiliate with a small, pretentious group of people, the kind who take twenty minutes to buy beer, and then don't, who belong to obscure charities but don't actually contribute anything that won't earn them that self-congratulatory mug for their imported coffee--people who listen to some pretty unlistenable shit just because it's difficult and rare and may, just may, get them laid by girls even more desperate and petty than they are themselves. Jazz does that to people. Oscar Peterson, thank God, does not. He may look like Briar Rabbit or that dude who just didn't make the final cast of What's Happening, but Lord Jesus, he could play. And the music? Fun, really fun. Like Bechet and his boy Joe Pass, Peterson made jazz entertaining, not esoteric, and really, that hadn't happened since Artie Shaw and the rest of the Big Banders fucked it up. His charm was infectious, his style exuberant, and his big, meaty grin the perfect image for what jazz, at its best, is supposed to be: democratic, capacious, and just plain happy. Alas, this performance was one of his last. After the stroke in 1993, he just wasn't the same. Still grinned a lot, though.

He died in December, renal failure. I'll miss him, stroke, Sambo, and all. He was a good man, and a happy one. Every time I listen to his albums or see him seated at that box, playing like his hands are on fire and the only water he can get to is trapped under those keys, I'm happy too.