Olympia 1963/Pleyel 1966

These recordings of the Oscar Peterson Trio in Paris -- with special guest Roy Elridge on four of the selections from the 1963 date -- are standard Peterson. The touch is light yet meaty, and the swing of the rhythm section, Ray Brown and Ed Thigpen, is flighty yet in the pocket. The music is enough to carry the listener in a dream state of awe and wonder. Opening the earlier set with "Six and Four" and sliding into "But Not for Me," with Eldridge accompanying and soloing before a total change happens on "Mainstem," is standard Peterson brilliance, and Eldridge is clearly moved to play his level best, lyrical, angular, and full of verve and speed. On the later gig from 1964, Peterson's trio remains the same, but there are no guests and the program is significantly different as the set centers in the key of blues. The band opens with Milt Jackson's "Reunion Blues," with quotes from Benny Golson's "Blues March" and from Billy Strayhorn's Fakebook, before a quick segue into Peterson's own "Wheatland" and "Nightingale," played at a different tempo and featuring a number of rhythmic and tonal shifts by Thigpen, who doesn't stroll so much as punch in his pizzicato. The gig winds up a few tracks later with Peterson's "Blues for Big Scotia," where he pulls out all the arpeggio stops and moves the right hand into overdrive, comping and vamping with a left hand teasing gorgeous augmented ninths and even 11ths out of the interval and playing nearly barrelhouse boogie with the left. This is Peterson at his level best, which is saying plenty. ~ Thom Jurek|