Stop and Hear the Music

My father is a jazz pianist and he loves Oscar Peterson. I remember him listening to Oscar Peterson records when I was little. He’d tap his feet and hum along. “Oscar can really swing,” he’d say. “That cat can swing.” I had an Oscar Peterson cassette. The album was called Night Train. I don’t think I got it from my dad. I think it was one of the many records that I recorded from the Atlantic City Public Library. At that time most of my music collection came from the library. This was the period in my life when I was going to become a professional dancer when I grew up. Anyway, when I was home alone I’d play Georgia On My Mind and dance and leap around the living room. I liked to pretend that I was dancing on stage in front of millions of people. It didn’t matter that I didn’t take any dance classes and I really could never dance in front of millions of people because of my unbelievable stage fright. Even though the professional dancing thing didn’t work out for me, I still love Oscar Peterson. I was sad to hear that he died on the 23^rd.