Customer Reviews

Night Child

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I bought this album for a friend almost 20 years ago, shortly before his house burned to the ground taking all of his records with it. As a result I only ever heard it once, ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT, and have looked for it in vain ever since. Until today. Thanks to Amazon's vast catalogue, I am at last enjoying it once again, and it's every bit as good as I remembered. Why this isn't high on the list of Oscar's best-sellers, I can only attribute to its general lack of availability. This album just cooks. His flirtation with electric keyboards makes most other practitioners of the art sound like novices. The title tune alone, played on acoustic piano, is worth the price of the CD, and is one of the most lavishly lyrical pieces of improvisation since In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning, with wonderful support from Pass and Pedersen. If I have a complaint, it's that, at less than 43 minutes, this album leaves me wanting much, much MORE!

This first album I heared of Oscar Peterson I recomend to almost everyone I know liking jazz. I get a lot of positive reactions, so I don't hesitate to say(altough I'm only using my small circle of friends as backup for my arguments)that this is a great album that should be much more popular than it is right now.

Peterson most of the time plays on an electric organ, wich makes the album very accesible. But that could be the reason why hardboppers, freejazzers or haters of the sound of the seventees would leave the album be.

I would not do that, tough. For this albums holds some of the most subtle playing I have ever heared in jazz. But some people just don't like their jazz to be subtle. Well, compared to the blues: this is no John Lee Hooker or Muddy Waters-album, but B.B. King comes to mind: great band, subtle, swings like hell.

I always likes different aproaches on blues, and it's still the same when I'm into jazz: sometimes Jazz should should be free, sometimes it should be rough, sometimes it must swing but all of the times it must be done great. And Night Child is great.

On this album we also hear a elegant Joe Pass on guitar, a fantastic bass of Niels Henning Orsted Pedersen and the very carefully swinging drums of Louis Bellson.

Peterson plays electric organ and even funks in the last song (!), but the song Night Child, in wich he plays an acoustic piano, is one of the best songs on the album, or for that matter of Petersons oeuvre. Like a lot of Peterson-jazz it starts of slowly, but when the tune develops Peterson can't hold back the swing. The way that happens in Night Child is so great that really no Peterson-fan can't miss this album.

In the end I totally agree with the reviewer that said that this album is not just for electric piano or Peterson fetishists. It's simply the best album of Oscar Peterson I own (together with Night Train). And technically I can't think of a lot of albums that's so perfect as this one.

This album, composed for Peterson's own child (or grandchild, I'm not quite certain -- but the choice of cover is obviously not arbitrary), is the most unique album he has ever recorded. So it is wonderful to see it available once again. It may be the only album where Peterson plays electronic instruments rather than his standard Borgendorffer (which adds an entire octave to the keyboard) or an organ. For that reason alone it's a collector's item -- but rather than buy it for its fetish qualities I suggest you buy it for its soulful playing, not just by Peterson but by the entire ensemble. The title track is brilliantly soft, and if one compares its melody to the song that Peterson later wrote for Niels-Henning Orsted-Pedersen, entitled Nigerian Marketplace (on the album published under that same title), which was recorded during a STUNNING live performance given at Montreux in 1982 and is one of the most riveting performances ever recorded by these two, one finds striking similarities throughout both of the pieces written by Peterson. The tenderness of Peterson's playing and the melody that he writes for his friend's bass are really unique for Peterson, and it shows him at his best. Both albums are highly recommended (and in this context of a certain melodic softness paired with absolute craftsmanship and timing, so is *any* album ever recorded by the late Gene Harris, who passed on January 9th, 2000. Some dates you never forget...)

Recorded in 1979 this something unusual in the Oscar Peterson cannon of recordings. Firstly all the compositions are Peterson originals, and secondly he plays electric Piano on all but one of the tracks. A recipe for disaster I hear you say. Not at all in fact, Peterson makes good use of the bell like qualities of the electric Piano (which I assume was a Fender Rhodes).

The musicians with Peterson are Joe Pass on Guitar, Loius Bellson on Drums and Neils-Henning Orsted Pederson on Bass. They all play there part well and NHOP even plays electric bass rather than upright on 'Teenager'. The swinging 'Dancin' Feet' is probably my favourite track however the long title track is also and absolute cracker, and also the only one played on accoustic Piano.

The album runs to just under 43 minutes in length and has sleeve notes by Benny Green, which are always worth reading. Highly recommended.