Tough Week to have Known Charlie Parker

While Charlie "Bird" Parker has been dead since 1955, many of his contemporaries have continued to soar for decades. Until this week, that is.

First it was Parker's protege, Frank Morgan, who flew the coop last week. And now news is that Oscar Peterson, a jazz pianist who played with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and Nat King Cole, has died at the age of 82.

Peterson began playing with the Johnny Holmes Orchestra, Canada's leading big band, in 1942, CBC said. He got a "big break'' in 1949 when he was invited to perform at Carnegie Hall with some of the biggest names in jazz and was touring the world by the 1950s. Peterson rose to prominence with his Oscar Peterson Trio and was featured in two movies.

Like they always say: Birds that play jazz together pass together.

[New York Sun]
[Bloomberg]