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When the great Canadian pianist Oscar Peterson first toured he made a plan, and he stuck to it. Peterson said, \u201cIf the only way I was going to make it was to frighten the hell out of everybody pianistically\u2014if that\u2019s what it took to get the attention\u2014then that\u2019s what I would do my best to do.\u201d

Footage of Peterson (1925-2007) making the comment appears in Oscar Peterson: Black + White, a documentary by veteran filmmaker Barry Avrich. The film slightly recasts the great piano virtuoso. During his life, he was well known for his formidable technique and charming, even ebullient presence, but some of his peak came during an era of significant Black empowerment, and the great pianist was occasionally shrugged off as an entertainer rather than a freedom fighter, a blanket charge that even Louis Armstrong faced. But the documentary is corrective, dwelling on Peterson\u2019s \u201cHymn to Freedom,\u201d a song that was important to the Civil Rights movement. This song, and the fact that Peterson\u2019s star has faded a bit in the music community since his death in 2007, provided Avrich\u2019s motivation in making the film.

Oscar Peter: Black + White Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxYywC_4nGs
Oscar Peterson, Hymn to Freedom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCrrZ1NnCuM

The great impresario Norman Granz heard him in 1949, brought him to New York, and placed him on his enormously popular Jazz at the Philharmonic tours, which enabled him to play with and alongside many if not most of the jazz legends of the era.

Norman Granz (August 6, 1918 \u2013 November 22, 2001) was an American jazz record producer and concert promoter. He founded the record labels Clef, Norgran, Down Home, Verve, and Pablo. Granz was acknowledged as "the most successful impresario in the history of jazz". He was also a champion of racial equality, insisting, for example, on integrating audiences at concerts he promoted.

Norman Granz opposed racism and fought many battles for his artists, many of whom were black. In 1955, in Houston, Texas, he removed signs that previously designated "White" and "Negro" restrooms, outside the auditorium where two concerts were to be performed by Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie. Between the two shows, Fitzgerald and Gillespie and Illinois Jacquet were shooting small-stakes dice in the dressing room to kill time, when the local police barged in and arrested them. After some negotiations, the artists were allowed to perform the second show and later were formally released on $50 bail. Granz, incensed by the incident, insisted on successfully fighting the charges, which cost him over $2,000.

Oscar Peterson recounted how Granz once insisted that white cabdrivers take his black artists as customers, while a policeman pointed a loaded pistol at his stomach. Granz also was among the first to pay white and black artists the same salary, and to give them equal treatment even in minor details, such as dressing rooms.

Granz also spearheaded the fight to desegregate the hotels and casinos in Las Vegas, arguing that it was unfair that black artists could perform on the stages, but could not stay or gamble at the hotels, or even enter through the front doors.

Granz was also interested in art, developing a friendship with Pablo Picasso, whom he met in 1968.

Mick Smith, Consultant M: (619) 227.3118

E: mick.smith@wsiworld.com

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