When Jim Davis started producing records at Verve, he changed the company's recording philosophy toward its most prolific instrumentalist. Where Norman Granz had produced countless Oscar Peterson albums dedicated to the popular song, Davis was more interested in making albums closer to how the Peterson trio sounded live. His first Peterson records were the legendary London House sessions. By the time of this album, there had been no personnel change in the trio for five years - so it is no surprise that the rapport among the musicians here is telepathic.

Universally regarded as one of the supreme keyboard masters of the swing era, Teddy Wilson refined the stride piano tradition established by James P. Johnson and Fats Waller and introduced qualities of elegance, delicacy and finesse that earned him wide-spread acclaim and a great number of imitators.

Teddy Wilson bears the proud title of jazz musician pure and simple and that is why the music in this record is of such high standard. By the time he joined Benny Goodman (at age 23 in 1935) Wilson had mastered aesthetic perfection and has allowed pure music to speak for him ever since. Recorded on June 15, 1980 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

This 1959 release from Oscar Peterson is dedicated to Harry Warren and Vincent Youmans, one of several Song Book albums the pianist recorded in the 1950s. While not exactly household names, both Warren and Youmans are credited for writing many familiar songs and standards, as demonstrated here by Peterson and his trio of bassist Ray Brown and Ed Thigpen on drums.

This 1959 release from Oscar Peterson is one of several albums he recorded in the 1950s dedicated to specific composers. On this collection Peterson revisits several of the Harold Arlen songs he included on a previous album years earlier, in a trio configuration here backed by bassist Ray Brown and drummer Ed Thigpen.

Oscar Peterson has thoroughly assimilated not just every piano style that preceded him buy every ensemble idiom as well: swinging big bands, gospel, European classical, and, of course, the blues. Having mastered all of this, Peterson found the standard piano trio the perfect vehicle for exploring all of these types of music. In this classic album, the crowning achievement in his greatest year, Peterson doesn't just explore these styles – he conquers them. "Night Train" is one of Peterson's most commercially successful recordings.

This release of cover songs from Oscar Peterson, recorded and released in 1959, features his trio of the era, Ray Brown on double bass and drummer Ed Thigpen.

Oscar Peterson has stated that he feels his MPS recordings are his finest. That is quite a statement considering the huge amount of records that the pianist has produced through the past 50 years. This set reissues the music from six of his MPS LPs: Action, Girl Talk, The Way I Really Play, My Favorite Instrument, Mellow Mood, and Travelin' On. While some of the performances feature the 1963 trio he had with bassist Ray Brown and drummer Ed Thigpen, most of the music dates from 1967-1968 and matches Peterson with bassist Sam Jones and either Louis Hayes or Bobby Durham on drums. A special treat is Peterson's first unaccompanied solo album, which fills up the final LP. Peterson's many fans know what to expect in this set, while other listeners need to discover him to realize what all of the fuss was about. Quite simply, Oscar Peterson has long been one of the greatest pianists the world has ever known; this reissue offers plenty of proof.

This all-star session was put together by Down Beat magazine featuring the winners and runners-up from the magazine's critic's poll in 1957. While John Coltrane's name may leap out at you from the cover art, he only plays his tenor sax on half the songs here. On the remaining material Coltrane leads the orchestra, a new step for him at the time and a glimpse at an interesting early chapter of his history. And what an orchestra it was: composed of the best of the up-and-coming New York jazz scene, the other musicians in the Winner's Circle here include Donald Byrd on trumpet, Al Cohn on baritone sax, Eddie Costa on piano and vibes, Kenny Burrell on guitar, Oscar Pettiford on bass and Ed Thigpen on drums.

One of the first Broadway musical scores to be overtly jazz-influenced was Leonard Bernstein's "West Side Story", a tale of rival street gangs in the inner city. In 1962, pianist Oscar Peterson put his light-swing signature on the already popular score, making it, in the words of one critic, 'a delight to hear again' and earning him a Grammy nomination.

This 1964 session from Oscar Peterson, bassist Ray Brown and drummer Ed Thigpen is loaded with standards and pop hits, from Barbra Streisand's signature People to The Girl From Ipanema. The set concludes with a Peterson original entitled Goodbye J.D.

In the 1950s and early '60s, producer Norman Granz perfected the songbook approach to album production by having vocalist Ella Fitzgerald interpret large segments of the standard jazz repertoire. In a frankly stated effort to expand the listening audience for this great body of work, Granz also asked Canadian pianist Oscar Peterson to churn out numerous instrumental songbooks albums under his own name with various combos. By the end of the decade, these included Oscar's newly reconfigured trio with bassist Ray Brown and drummer Ed Thigpen. Like its companion albums, Peterson's Richard Rodgers Song Book was never intended as a set of exercises in soul-searching profundity. Instead what you get are simple, straightforward, well-played appreciations of great American songwriting.

On this 1959 release, one of several albums Oscar Peterson recorded in the 1950s dedicated to specific composers, the pianist performs music from Gershwin's opera Porgy And Bess in a trio configuration, backed by Ray Brown on double bass and drummer Ed Thigpen.

This 1959 release from pianist Oscar Peterson is one of several albums he recorded in the 1950s dedicated to specific composers. Peterson revisits many of the same songs he included on an earlier Gershwin album, backed on these sessions by Ray Brown on double bass and drummer Ed Thigpen.

Saxophonist Ben Webster is joined by legendary jazz pianist Oscar Peterson. Webster, known for his association with Duke Ellington's Jazz Orchestra playing lead tenor, frequently played with Peterson in the 1950s and are joined here by some of the best jazz musicians of the time. Ben Webster Meets Oscar Peterson was originally released in 1959, and this studio album is a compilation of seven great jazz tracks, including "How Deep is the Ocean," "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning," and "Bye, Bye, Blackbird".