A master …

… Jazz Profiles: Erroll Garner on Verve Jazz Masters. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

“When Erroll Garner died early in 1977 at the age of 53, the British music magazine Jazz Journal noted what Art Tatum once had told Oscar Peterson. Tatum no doubt expected Peterson to succeed him as the reigning virtuoso of jazz piano. But after hearing Garner one night during a New York visit, according to the magazine, the Old Lion took his cub aside and warned him: "Beware of the little man." I don't know, of course, if that story is true. It does have the faint aroma of legend about it. But if it isn't true, it ought to be.