📍Little Burgundy, Montreal, QC, Canada
1925 – 1945“I was born in Montreal in August 1925, the fourth of five children of Daniel Peterson, who had come from the British Virgin Islands and worked as a porter for the Canadian Pacific Railway, and Kathleen, from St. Kitts, who did domestic work. We lived in Little Burgundy, in the south-west of the city near the railway yards, the heart of Montreal's Black community, home to railway porters, tradespeople and musicians, with jazz clubs not far away. My father was a self-taught organist, and he insisted that each of us learn the piano and a brass instrument; we taught each other, and played as a family band at churches and community halls. I started on trumpet and piano when I was about five. Then, at seven, I fell ill with tuberculosis, the disease that killed my eldest brother, Fred, and after more than a year of illness I couldn't play the trumpet any more, so I gave everything to the piano. My sister Daisy taught me classical piano and later taught many Montreal jazz pianists, and I practised for hours every day, working through Bach and Liszt as well as boogie-woogie and Art Tatum's records. At fourteen I won a national amateur contest, and soon I was playing on the radio and with the Johnny Holmes Orchestra. In 1949 Norman Granz brought me to Carnegie Hall, and I went on to tour the world with my trio and record with Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. I wrote Hymn to Freedom for the civil rights movement. Little Burgundy remembers me with a park, a mural and a concert hall at Concordia University bearing my name.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today