During the years that I like to consider as the "Years of the Jazz Pianist," I grew to know and love a gentleman who became one of the most popular Jazz Pianists of our time - Erroll Garner. Erroll and I became good friends and mutual admirers in the late fifties. I grew to know and love him as the forever-happy gremlin. I also grew to know and love him as a pianist with a completely different concept and approach to Jazz playing. If I had to nominate one of the pianists of our time as having been the most imitated, I would have to choose Erroll. Ironically, although many lounge pianists that I've heard attempted this, and for some reason thought he was easy to copy, I am afraid that most of them made a bad job of it. The fact is, Erroll's style was one of the most difficult approaches I know of. The thing that threw most of his loving imitators off was the fact that, regardless of what his right hand played, his left hand somehow managed to continue a totally metronomic pulse of chordal support based on a true four-beat format to each bar. His right hand, meanwhile, would oftimes purposefully delay his inventive ideas, sometimes falling dangerously behind the metronomic pulse of his left. I respected and loved Erroll because I considered him to be totally unique in his approach to the instrument. We became fast friends and frequently would not see each other for months at a time; however Erroll seemed committed to dropping in on me at various times in my engagements in the U.S.

One night in the London House in Chicago as I was in the midst of performing the first show of the evening, I decided to play his composition, Misty, which at the time was a big hit with the listening public. And I decided to offer a rendition very different from Erroll's. The first chorus was done almost like a piano recital involving varied harmonic extensions on his original chord structure and sprinkled throughout with cascading runs. When this came to a climax, and just prior to the quartet joining me, amidst a totally silenced room, I heard a voice happily and emotionally yell, "OOCHI-KOOCHI-COO!" This was Erroll's way, as he told me, of letting me know that he loved my interpretation of his tune. I shall always remember that gremlin-like voice and the night that he gave his stamp of approval of my playing of his great song.

Following the Quartet that consisted of Niels Pedersen, and Lorne Lofsky on guitar, I took a sabbatical for a while and pondered as to what my next group should consist of. It was during the time that I was conjuring up arrangements for the Trio of Niels, Martin and myself that Niels made mention of a guitarist that he thought I would really enjoy playing with. I had never heard Ulf Wakenius play, and was hesitant about making this particular move; however I decided to do some serious thinking about the idea with an eye towards returning to the quartet format. I really enjoy this instrumentation because it gives me the opportunity to have what are virtually three melodic voices in the group that can be used in a contrapuntal manner. Harkening back to the days of Barney Kessel and Herbie Ellis, I became increasingly curious about the Swedish guitarist that Niels was referring to. So I got hold of a couple of CDs that he was on, and was immediately taken with his obvious and powerful will to swing. Not only does Ulf have great chops (i.e., technical dexterity), he also has a tremendous melodic and harmonic concept on the guitar. When I spoke to Niels about this, he explained that Ulf was a dyed-in-the-wool Wes Montgomery devotee. It certainly showed in his playing! At any rate, I was sufficiently impressed with what I had heard that I asked Niels to speak to Ulf about joining us. We got back an immediate and enthousiastic "Yes!"

After a few brief rehearsals, he joined us for the first concert by this quartet in Munich, Germany at the Munich Philharmonie Hall. There was incredible excitement and deep-rooted blues oriented swing that night, a night that terminated with four guys coming offstage and embracing each other with great joy. We realized that we had reached an immediate point of musical understanding. The Swinging Swede, Ulf Wakenius, has remained a valued and exciting member of the new Oscar Peterson Quartet, which I jokingly refer to in my introduction of them as the NATO Group.