Morten Gunnar Larsen is one of the great jazz and ragtime pianists in the world. His only problem is that he lives in Norway, apparently on purpose. Now in his mid-twenties, he devotes himself to concert work in Europe, playing mainly the works of Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, and Louis Moreau Gottschalk.
On his first visit to the United States in the late 1970s, he spoke virtually no English. But at a party at my place in New Orleans in honor of Eubie Blake, he melted the ladies with a dazzling smile, European manners, and general modesty.
Morten was overwhelmed with the excitement of meeting Eubie in person. I told Eubie this nineteen-year-old was a piano shark. Morten was reluctant to demonstrate his abilities before the legendary composer and virtuoso, but we overcame his diffidence, though not without difficulty. He opened with Eubie’s challenging “Charleston Rag,” which was composed in 1899 with the express motive of “cutting” all his contemporaries in piano competition. Eubie would later say he didn’t think he, himself, had ever rendered the piece so flawlessly. With urging, Morten continued to play for most of the afternoon. Eubie never moved, but at last he said, “I been waitin’ all day for this kid to make a mistake, but he never did.”