Just Friends Oscar Peterson 1974
Norman Granz heard Oscar Peterson for the first on a “live local” broadcast in Montreal in a cab to the airport. He turned around invited him to New York. At the age of 24 Oscar Peterson stunned Carnegie Hall in 1949 and began a prolific jazz career in the next year.
In the early seventies he met a young bassist from Denmark. Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen, born in 1946 joined Oscar on many of his concert tours and together they recorded more than 50 albums
This clip was recorded in Prague in 1974. One hears the incredible togetherness and of course the skill and talent of these two master improvisors. One of the best and fastest bass solos I ever heard and then Oscar being able to switch within a chorus or two between the stride style developed by Fats Waller and the utmost technical swing style started by Art Tatum, both jazz pioneers from the twenties and thirties.
A stunning performance!!
