If you are your own artist, is there any use to you in knowing "all the licks" for the sake of getting gigs to support yourself? Is it detrimental to personal artistry to spend years "learning all the Oscar Peterson 251's", and learning all the meat-and-potatoes, working-man vocab in every key--when you could be creating? and learning how to hear your own ideas?
there are gigs that require you to know oscar peterson licks??