Oscar Peterson Canadian Stamp

This article features the Oscar Peterson Canadian stamp from 2005. A significant number of jazz musicians appear on postage stamps. Of course, there are a a great number from the United States, where jazz began. However, many countries have chosen to feature either international jazz celebrities or homegrown musical talent. Make sure to check out my page exploring jazz musicians on postage stamps. In the case of this stamp of Oscar Peterson, Canada chose both. Peterson was Canadian and he was also one of the most important pianists in all of jazz history.

Oscar Peterson

Peterson was born on August 15, 1925 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. His parents were immigrants from the west Indies and he grew up in the Black neighborhood of Little Burgundy. There, he was surrounded by jazz from an early age. He began to play both the trumpet and the piano when he was five, but after suffering from tuberculosis, gave up the trumpet.

Peterson’s early training was in classical piano, learning first from his sister, and then with Paul de Marky, a Hungarian born pianist living in Montreal. Even as he developed a classical technique, Peterson was also picking up the ragtime, boogie-woogie, and jazz that he heard around him. At the age of 14 he won a national music competition and left high school to play music professionally. He began with a weekly radio show and also performed in hotels and music halls. By the time he was twenty, Peterson had a reputation for his fast, virtuosic, technical brilliance.

Peterson soon was working to develop an international reputation too, appearing in 1949 in Carnegie Hall in New York City. He began a grueling touring schedule, appearing mostly in small trios. The musicians that played with Peterson are a who’s who of jazz, including bassist Ray Brown, guitarists Barney Kessel, Herb Ellis, Joe Pass, and Irving Ashby, and drummers Ed Thigpen, Louis Hayes, and Bobby Durham, among many others. In addition, Peterson collaborated with jazz musicians and larger ensembles including Ben Webster (saxophone), Clark Terry, (trumpet), and Milt Jackson (vibraphone).

Peterson suffered from arthritis nearly his entire life and in 1993 suffered from a stroke. His playing was affected and he toured very little after that. He died on December 23, 2007, at the age of 82. By that time, during a career that spanned more than sixty years, Peterson had made more than 200 recordings, won seven Grammy Awards, and played thousands of concerts across the globe.

The Stamp

The 2005 Oscar Peterson Canadian stamp has a face value of 50 cents. It features a photograph of a jovial Peterson seated and wearing a suit, leaning forward while his arms rest on top of a piano lid. Above and behind him is a softer image of his hands playing on a piano keyboard. It is a very attractive design in two tones by Tiit Telmet.

Quite wonderfully, Canada has no prohibitions against creating stamps featuring living people. The Peterson stamp was the first to feature a living Canadian who was not a government official or representing a larger organization, appearing simply for his own accomplishments on the stamp. The stamp release took place on August 15, 2008, on the occasion of Peterson’s eightieth birthday, and he was a live and present to celebrate the stamp release.

Below is an example of Peterson’s extraordinary virtuosic playing: