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2.7.05 Oscar Peterson

His shoulders are hunched and his head slopes low from a life bent over the keys. He's a giant, huge of girth, but his legs are spindled with age. He walks with geisha steps now; his ankles have grown too tiny for him. Oscar Peterson is eighty.

And the Royal Albert Hall is packed to the rafters. The audience isn't as old as you would think, although there are more than a few grey heads. It is almost painful, listening to this beauty, and knowing how soon it will be gone. Poof. It's what brought me to tears watching The Last of the First, that doc about the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band. The band is a collective of the last, great side-men of jazz's golden age. These cats, they played with Basie, they played with Ellington. And they're all that's left. Them and Oscar and a few others. (I found out the other day my aunt Bobbie sang with Ella Fitzgerald; I had no idea. You never know your own family, not really. I couldn't ask Bobbie; heroin took her away long before I was born.)

Something great is passing away from us, right now, and most people won't realise until it's gone. Sure, there are recordings. It's not the same. Oscar's got a new bassist, Doug Young. He replaces Nils Pederson, who died of a heart attack at 58. He replaced Ray Brown, also in heaven now. Doug Young has white hair. Plays like a mad angel; fastest hands I've ever seen. Oscar himself, his playing's a big mess, but inside that mess is this divine sensibility and order. And I'll probably never see him play again.

Yeah, I know. Things die all the time. I've said it myself, all cocky sneer and attitude. But some things die while they're still needed. Oscar's jazz isn't dead; hell, it isn't even slightly tired. But the men who play it are.

You never know what ages well. A week ago I heard Patti Smith play Horses. It was faintly embarrassing; passe, full of clumsy sixth-form poetry. Patti put on as good a performance as she always does. But you can never go back. Horses was a point in time; we've moved beyond it. Oscar's "Backyard Blues" is different. It's then, but it's also now. When you get something really right, it transcends time. And to still hear it played by the guy that wrote it, well, that's pretty special.

This was my week of legends. I saw a double feature of Point Blank and Bullitt the night before I saw Peterson. If anything, those jagged, bright, empty stories, full of the alienation of cities and the space between people, are even more affecting now than when they were made. This tells you something about film: Point Blank was based on a book called Hunter by Donald Westlake. Thursday night in London, forty years after John Boorman made Point Blank, he met Westlake for the first time.

( 12:35 AM )

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