Oscar Peterson (Piano)
Ray Brown (Bass)
Ed Thigpen (Drums)
Roy Eldridge (Trumpet)

Reunion Blues
Satin Doll
But Not For Me
It Ain’t Necessarily So
Chicago (That Toddling Town)

Oscar Peterson (Piano)
Ray Brown (Bass)
Ed Thigpen (Drums)

Soon
On Green Dolphin Street
Bags' Groove
Tonight
C-Jam Blues
Hymn To Freedom

Oscar Peterson (Piano)
Ray Brown (Bass)
Ed Thigpen (Drums)
Clark Terry (Trumpet & Flugelhorn)

Yours Is My Heart Alone
(Mack The Knife) Moritat
Blues For Smedley
Misty
Mumbles

24-page booklet

Liner Notes by Doug Ramsey
Foreword by Kelly Peterson
Cover photo by Jan Persson/ctsimages.com
Booklet photos by Jan Persson, Val Wilmer, Susanne Schapowalow, Gai Terrell
Memorabilia collage
Total time: 86 minutes

Sample of Foreword:

One of my treasured memories is of an evening 34 years ago, when I attended an Oscar Peterson concert for the very first time. I had just completed my first year of university study, and he was playing at the Eastman Theatre in Rochester, NY. My mother, brother and I, all fans of his, were so excited to be able to attend. The exhilaration of that evening remains with me still. To actually see this giant of the piano stride onstage with such grace, confidence, elegance and power was mesmerizing. And once he sat down to play, the entire audience was enraptured.

How amazing it was when, seven years later, I actually met Oscar Peterson in person. And then five years after that, we were married. What an adventure. And what great joy filled my life.

...

—Kelly Peterson

Sample Liner Notes by Doug Ramsey:

This DVD contains performances by the Oscar Peterson Trio that have rested in TV station vaults since they were first seen in Europe in the first half of the 1960s. The band whose work it preserves was one of two great trios led by the pianist in the first decade and a half following his dramatic entry onto the international jazz stage. We see and hear the group accompanying two major soloists. Nonetheless, in its cohesiveness and uncanny empathy—particularly in a Danish nightclub in 1964— the trio alone reaches a height of concentrated artistic intensity that is rarely captured in recordings, let alone on film or videotape.

When Herb Ellis left the Oscar Peterson Trio in 1958, Peterson chose not to bring on another guitarist, no matter how gifted a replacement might have been. In five years, Ellis, bassist Ray Brown and Peterson had forged a collective musical identity so bound up in their personalities and interaction that a new guitarist would only underline Ellis’s absence.
Brown was a constant with Peterson even before the trio. Norman Granz, the impresario of Jazz at the Philharmonic, teamed the young Canadian pianist with Brown and drummer Buddy Rich when he brought Peterson to New York in 1949 for his first American appearance. A prodigy, Peterson had been a phenomenon in his native country for a decade. He had his own radio program in 1939 when he was 15, and was a recording artist through the last half of the 1940s. Visiting American musicians, including Brown, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins and Count Basie, were familiar with his playing and astounded by it.

...

Stockholm, Sweden, April 3, 1963
In the first segment, filmed at a Stockholm TV station, Peterson saunters purposefully to the piano. A quick adjustment of the bench, and the trio is off and swinging on Milt Jackson’s riff-based “Reunion Blues.” Peterson takes four choruses of improvisation during which Thigpen switches from brushes to sticks. Brown solos for two choruses, Peterson two more. They repeat the theme and have warmed up and settled in with a routine they have repeated in hundreds of concerts around the world.

Watching this performance, we get the first indication in the DVD of an aspect of the trio that helped to endear it to audiences. The frequent eye contact and smiles among Peterson, Brown and Thigpen accomplished more than unspoken cues. It communicated to listeners the regard, respect and affection among the members. It is no coincidence that the same phenomenon characterized two of the other most successful small jazz groups of the era, the Modern Jazz Quartet and the Dave Brubeck Quartet. The same was true, although more subtly, of the Miles Davis Quintet in the 1950s and early 1960s. Despite the cliché, Miles rarely turned his back on the audience. When he did, it was usually to pay attention to what his sidemen were playing. Camaraderie on the bandstand could never make up for inadequate music, but it goes a long way toward creating a bond with audiences.

...

Helsinki, Finland, Cultural House (Kulttuuritalo), March 23, 1965
Peterson begins by kicking off Franz Lehar’s “Yours Is My Heart Alone” at a supersonic speed that has Thigpen smiling gamely and Brown—normally unfazed by rapid paces—giving Peterson a “whew” look of mock admonishment. This was fast even by the trio’s standards. Brown leans into the strenuous tempo. Our heroes get a few seconds of breathing space as Clark Terry appears from the wings. The previous year, Terry was guest soloist on an Oscar Peterson Trio album that was enthusiastically received by reviewers and record buyers.

Having made his initial stir in jazz as a trumpeter with Charlie Barnet, Eddie Vinson, Charlie Venture and Count Basie, Terry gained fame as a member of Duke Ellington’s band in the 1950s. In the 1960s, he became a household figure as a featured band member on NBC’s The Tonight Show. He co-led a successful quintet with valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer and was one of the busiest studio, recording and festival musicians in jazz. Terry’s easy mastery of the flugelhorn is evident in a rapid version of “Moritat” (the instrumental version of “Mack The Knife”), one of the pieces from that recording with Peterson. This video provides close looks at Terry’s use of circular breathing, taking in air through his nose and storing it in his cheeks while playing. He doesn’t use the technique exclusively here, but it accounts for some of the astonishingly long, uninterrupted melodic lines he constructs.

...

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