LISTEN TO ONE: Tin Tin Deo
Between 1964 and 1971 Oscar Peterson made a series of live recordings in Germany at the home of his friend Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer, before a small invited audience. The series as a whole was called Exclusively for My Friends. Brunner-Schwer began releasing them in Europe on his own label, MPS Records, in 1968, and he licensed the first two of them to Prestige for American distribution, which is how Peterson, normally exclusive to Verve and other Norman Granz labels, came under Bob Weinstock's aegis. Which is nice for a follower and chronicler of Prestige, because it gives me the opportunity to spend some time listening to the most acclaimed piano player of his era, perennial poll winner, accumulator of a dizzying number of awards, all of these laurels richly deserved.
The Brunner-Schwer sessions were mostly trio recordings (one is solo piano) made during Peterson's various European tours, so his supporting cast varies, but is always first rate. Peterson's long-term trio with Ray Brown and Ed Thigpen was nearing its finish, but it was still together for the first of these concerts for friends.
Brown had been with Peterson since 1950. As a teenager, he had already found steady work around the Pittsburgh area, but in 1945, when he graduated high school, there was only one place for a young jazz musician with progressive ideas, and that was New York. He bought a one way ticket, and it might just as well have said on it Destination: 52nd Street. He knew Hank Jones, Jones brought him to Dizzy Gillespie, and Gillespie hired him on the spot.
As instant a click as there was with Gillespie, Brown clicked in the same way with Oscar Peterson. He also clicked, musically and otherwise, with Ella Fitzgerald. Musically, their union was a success. Otherwise...they divorced in 1953, after six years of marriage, though they continued to work together.
Their original trio was piano-bass-guitar, with first Barney Kessel and then Herb Ellis as the third musician, When Ellis departed in 1958, they decided that he was irreplaceable, so they wouldn't try. They would hire a drummer instead, and that's when Ed Thigpen came aboard.
Thigpen had drumming in his genes; his father had been the longtime drummer for Andy Kirk. He brought an impressive list of credentials to the Peterson trio, including quite a history with Prestige, and he would go on to a distinguished career after, including several years with Ella Fitzgerald (no marriage, though).
They would both be moving on not long after this--there would be only one more trio album, that one live from a concert hall in Copenhagen. This session captures them at the peak of their creative and collaborative powers, featuring the standards that Peterson excelled at, a ballad composed by Billy Taylos ("Easy Walker"), and an excursion off the beaten track, "Tin Tin Deo." Composed by the legendary percussionist Chano Pozo, it was first recorded by Pozo with James Moody, and most famously by Dizzy Gillespie. Peterson's trio essays it without Latin percussion, but Peterson's piano is rhythmically tricky, and rhythmically persuasive enough to be completely satisfactory.
Encouraged by the live and intimate audience, Peterson gives a persuasive demonstration of why led all those polls for so many years.
The 1968 German LP was the result of two different house concerts at Brunner-Schwer's home, the first in late 1963, the second in May of 1964. It was entitled Action. The Prestige release, the following year (the year Peter Fonda's Easy Rider was released) was called Easy Walker. Brunner-Schwer produced.
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