Today’s LA Times carries the obituary of jazz bassist Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen, who passed away Tuesday of unannounced causes.
Over 20 years ago, my sister bought me the now unjustly long-forgotten Oscar Peterson album “Nigerian Marketplace”, featuring NHOP’s playing. Oscar Peterson purists don’t tend to grant his later work much creedence, but I’m not one of them. From the crispness of the early digital recording, the fantastic sound of the Bosendorfer piano, and NHOP’s bass (particularly NHOP’s bass, especially on the haunting title track and the cover of “Au Privave”), it’s my all-time favorite album, out of the 400 LPs of all genres in my possession. Anytime after that that I saw NHOP’s name or initials on a poster, I thrilled at the thought that more people would be hearing the work of this superlatively talented man, now dead too soon at 58.
Thank god for recordings. I need to get that album on CD, or buy a new turntable.
I hate it when these old-time jazz musicians go to the big gig. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of replacements.
True…I was just talking about this with a friend last night. When I moved to NYC in 1981, you could go hear the most amazing giants of the jazz world every freakin’ NIGHT. Sonny Stitt, Chet Baker, Stan Getz, Benny Carter, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Higgins, Art Farmer, J.J. Johnson, the Gil Evans Orchestra…
All gone now.
NHOP was fantastic. Never heard him play live, but he’s a sideman on many, many albums in my collection. You always knew you were going to get some tasty bass when you picked up a session with him on it.
Like any Dexter Gordon fan, I have always been very, very impressed by NHOP. Jazz is poorer without him.
And yes, it’s hard to see so many great ones die. Whenever a prominent jazz musician over 55 comes to Seattle, I try my best to catch the gig, knowing it may be my last chance. I’ve seen some great ones this way: Elvin Jones, Steve Lacy, Ray Brown, Hank Jones, Kenny Barron, Marian McPartland, Jim Hall, Joanne Brackeen, Toots Thielemans, McCoy Tyner, and Bobby Hutcherson, to name a few. Thankfully, most of them (except Lacy, Brown, and Elvin) are still with us.