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When it comes to jazz I tend to lean more toward the horn players.  I have no idea why this is but it just is.  Maybe it’s just because the first jazz musician who really reached past the blocks I had put up against the music was Miles Davis.  Even my brother, though, first became a fan of Charlie Parker.  For some reason those horns just reach right through the haze of rock and rap and other music and touch us in my family.

However, once you get into jazz there are others you can grow to appreciate.  Once you get past the horn players you find there are some amazing piano players.  Then you discover the bass players and drummers.  Then you find out there are dazzling bass players too.

Not that long ago we lost one of the greats and, for whatever reason, I was thinking about him this morning.  Oscar Peterson was one of those guys who played for a long time and played well, often with his trio.  I always remember pulling out the Oscar Peterson CDs at the jazz radio station with a smile.  Maybe it was because he was almost always smiling on the covers himself.

Music and art and other forms of expression are fascinating.  They provide each creator with a kind of immortality that you generally don’t get elsewhere.  Maybe if you build buildings you might but even they crumble and fall.  The music, paintings, photos and printed word stay around forever in one form or another.

So, while it’s sad that Oscar passed away, the fact is his large volume of work remains.  It can be passed on from people like myself to others who may have not had the chance to hear him before.  Then they can appreciate him and pass him on and so forth.  Thus, immortality is achieved.  Maybe a star can fade, but even Jelly Roll Morton can still be found, listened to and appreciated all of these years later.  Mozart’s  music may be more appreciated all of these hundreds of years later than when he was alive.

So, for your Sunday morning here is a little live Oscar Peterson and his quartet from YouTube.  It’s the tune “Cakewalk:”

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