When the great Canadian pianist Oscar Peterson first toured Jim Crow America, he made a plan, and he stuck to it. Peterson said, “If the only way I was going to make it was to frighten the hell out of everybody pianistically—if that’s what it took to get the attention—then that’s what I would do my best to do.”
Footage of Peterson (1925-2007) making the comment appears in Oscar Peterson: Black + White, a new documentary by veteran filmmaker Barry Avrich that premieres on February 15 on Hulu. The film slightly recasts the great piano virtuoso. During his life, he was well known for his formidable technique and charming, even ebullient presence, but some of his peak came during an era of significant Black empowerment, and the great pianist was occasionally shrugged off as an entertainer rather than a freedom fighter, a blanket charge that even Louis Armstrong faced. But the documentary is corrective, dwelling on Peterson’s “Hymn to Freedom,” a song that was every bit as important to the Civil Rights movement as Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddamn,” though it is far less iconic. This song, and the fact that Peterson’s star has faded a bit in the music community since his death in 2007, provided Avrich’s motivation in making the film.
