Sheet music by Oscar Pettiford

Oscar Collins Pettiford was a jazz musician, arranger and composer who played double bass and cello and is considered one of the most important musicians of modern jazz. Oscar Pettiford, called O.P. by his colleagues, was a pioneer of bebop with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Like Jimmy Blanton (whose legitimate successor he was considered to be in New York in the 1950s) and Charles Mingus, he helped make the double bass a solo instrument in jazz. He also introduced the cello, to which he transferred pizzicato bass playing, as a solo instrument in jazz in 1950.