A life of great note
He was a master jazz pianist and composer who gained worldwide admiration and acclaim for his dazzling dexterity, speed, and technique. But in 1945, when this photograph was made, Oscar Peterson was still a budding piano prodigy.
Taken for the Canadian Pacific Railway’s staff magazine, the picture shows the nineteen-year-old Montrealer, on the right, playing a duet with his father, Daniel. Oscar’s face is beaming, and it’s likely a proud moment for Daniel as well. The elder Peterson worked as a porter for the railroad, and knowing that his son’s talent would be shared with the magazine’s readers would undoubtedly have been very fulfilling.
Oscar Peterson’s influence and impact was felt far beyond the concert halls and auditoriums in which he performed. An early and vocal pioneer of the North American civil rights movement, he spent his life fighting for racial equality. Black Canadians in the 1940s and 1950s, like their American counterparts, faced immense hurdles and unfair treatment due to their race. Daniel Peterson regularly encountered racism while working for the CPR, and Oscar grew up determined to see justice for Black people.
Oscar Peterson first gained attention in 1941 when, as a fourteen-year-old, he won a CBC talent contest. By 1949 he was playing New York’s Carnegie Hall and was well on his way to becoming an international jazz sensation. Over the ensuing decades, Peterson toured the world multiple times, selling tens of thousands of albums and winning eight Grammy awards, including one for lifetime achievement as an instrumental soloist. Inducted into the Order of Canada in 1972, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1984.
Among his most lasting legacies is the song “Hymn to Freedom,” written by Peterson in 1962 with lyrics by Harriette Hamilton. The song, which includes the lines “When every heart joins every heart/ And together yearns for liberty/ That’s when we’ll be free,” was adopted as a crusade anthem by the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
Peterson suffered a stroke in 1993 that impacted the technical aspects of his playing but did not derail his productivity. After his death in 2007, the New York
Times heralded him in an obituary as “one of the greatest virtuosos in jazz.” A year later, “Hymn to Freedom” was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2009 it was played at the inauguration of Barack Obama, the first Black president of the United States.