George Benson

jazz musician; guitarist; singer

Personal Information

Born March 22, 1943, in Pittsburgh, PA; wife's name Johnnie; seven children, three deceased.

Career

Guitarist, vocalist, and composer. Played electric guitar in quartet of jazz musician Jack McDuff, 1962-65; worked as sideman and led own quartets as guitarist and vocalist, 1965-; signed recording contract with Columbia label, 1965; worked with producer Creed Taylor, first at A&M Records, then at CTI, 1968-74; signed with Warner Brothers label, 1976; released Breezin', one of the top-selling jazz albums of all time, 1976; moved to GRP label, 1995; released Standing Together, 1998.

Life's Work

George Benson is one of the few musicians who has successfully crossed the divide between jazz and black popular music, neither ignoring the commercial possibilities in jazz nor abandoning his artistry when he achieved commercial success in the late 1970s and early 1980s. His hit recordings featured his light yet expressive singing voice, and to the general public he is known as well for his vocal work as for his guitar skills. But Benson came out of the jazz world, where he had a loyal cadre of fans, and returned to jazz when his connections with that world threatened to become stretched too thin. He is one of the figures most responsible for the presence of sophisticated jazz musicianship in the world of black popular music generally.

Born on March 22, 1943 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Benson showed prodigious talent from an early age, winning a singing contest when he was only four years old and enjoying a short career as a child radio performer under the name of "Little Georgie Benson." He started playing the guitar when he was eight, but it was as a vocalist that he spent much of his vast musical energy as a teenager, organizing and performing with a succession of rhythm-and-blues and rock bands around Pittsburgh. He made recordings for RCA Victor's X Records subsidiary in the middle 1950s. But Benson's stepfather encouraged his instrumental efforts by constructing a guitar for him, and in his late teens he began to concentrate exclusively on guitar. Seeking out the music of modern jazz's golden age, he became more and more interested in jazz, and was particularly inspired by recordings of saxophonist Charlie Parker and guitarists Charlie Christian and Grant Green.

Discovered by John Hammond

In 1961 Benson jumped to the national stage when he joined the group backing jazz organist Jack McDuff. He played and recorded with McDuff for four years. Then he struck out on his own: he moved to New York City, then the capital of the jazz universe, and formed his own band. There Benson made two acquaintances who proved crucial in setting him on the path to jazz stardom: guitarist Wes Montgomery, whose soft tone and graceful octave playing provided Benson with his most important stylistic inspiration, and Columbia Records producer and executive John Hammond, whose unerring eye for talent brought such seminal musicians as Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen to the label. Impressed by Benson's growing list of sideman credits, which included work with such luminaries as Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard and later Miles Davis, Hammond signed Benson to Columbia in 1965.

Benson's first two Columbia albums were It's Uptown and Benson Burner. His 1960s LPs, two of which were produced by Hammond himself, were in the main bop-influenced vein of the jazz of the time, and they garnered the guitarist, who was still in his early twenties, plenty of positive attention in the jazz community. Searching for wider public recognition, Benson switched labels several times, landing first with Verve (1967), and then with A&M (1968) and CTI (1970-71). He came under the influence of jazz producer Creed Taylor, who had also worked with Montgomery, and who encouraged Benson's natural versatility, backing him with various ensembles and cutting vocal tracks with him that reawakened Benson's interest in singing.

Success with Pop Vocal Track

It was another label move that paved the way for Benson's breakthrough to mass success. Signing with Warner Brothers in late 1975, he released the album Breezin'; the following year. While much of the album reprised the light guitar-and-strings sound that was common in Benson's CTI work, he took two great and accessible steps forward. First, Benson included on the album a frankly pop-oriented vocal, the Leon Russell composition "This Masquerade." The song reached the Number One position on jazz and R&B charts and drove the album to the same position on the pop charts. Benson's second innovation on Breezin'; was the introduction of what would become his trademark: scat singing along with his guitar, doubling it at the interval of an octave.

The combination was irresistible, and by some accounts Breezin', which won three Grammy awards, became the best selling jazz album of all time. Benson's pop vocals were self-assured and pleasant; he was in front of the curve which would lead to the highly successful, jazz-inflected "Quiet Storm" formats in black radio of the 1980s. The scat singing seemed to connote a satisfying kind of oneness between Benson and his guitar. "When I pick up the guitar, it's an extension of what I am," Benson told Guitar Player magazine. A series of commercially successful albums followed, most of which emphasized Benson's singing. All six of Benson's Warner Brothers albums of the late 1970s and early 1980s were certified gold (sales of 500,000 copies), and four of them went platinum (sales of 1,000,000 copies). Benson credited his success in part to his conversion to the faith of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Like other jazz players who have followed commercially oriented paths, Benson has taken criticism from jazz purists who felt that he had abandoned his early artistry. Writing about 1978's In Your Eyes, for example, Richard S. Ginell observed in the All-Music Guide to Jazz that "[f]or jazz fans, Benson's albums at this point become a search for buried treasure, for his guitar time is extremely limited." Benson apparently took the criticism to heart, for in 1989 he made a full-blast return to jazz, recording Tenderly, an album of standards, with the legendary jazz pianist McCoy Tyner, and touring with Tyner's trio that year. In 1990 he recorded the album Big Boss Band with Count Basie's orchestra.

Moved Between Jazz and Pop

The music he made when he returned to jazz showcased part of what was best about Benson's music: his versatility. He was equally at home with small ensembles, with a big band, with a string section, with hard bop, with Latin-inflected selections, with popular stylings. Through the 1990s Benson, his popularity assured, appeared in a wide variety of concert situations, and continued to manage well the balance he had achieved between the worlds of jazz and pop. He moved to the jazz-oriented GRP label in 1996, releasing the album That's Right, a quiet-storm-styled work, and following it up 1998's Standing Together in the same smooth-jazz vein.

For all his success, Benson's life has been shadowed by personal tragedy. He has lost three of his seven sons, one to kidney failure, one to crib death, and one to gunshot injuries stemming from a bar fight. His losses led to an unusual commission in 1998: he was asked by father Mohammed Al Fayed to write s song in commemoration of Dodi Al Fayed, who died along with his friend Princess Diana of England in a 1997 automobile crash in Paris. "During the writing, I asked my wife to come listen to what I had written," Benson was quoted as saying in Jet. "But when I got to certain parts, it became too difficult. My lips were trembling. I was thinking about my own losses and couldn't get past it. It stopped me cold."

Awards

Many Grammy awards, including Record of the Year 1977; Best Instrumental Performance, 1977; Best R&B Male Vocal Performance, 1980; Best Jazz Vocal Performance, 1980; and Best Pop Instrumental, 1983. Platinum and gold record certifications for numerous albums.

Works

Selected discography

• George Benson/Jack McDuff, Prestige, 1965.
• It's Uptown, Columbia, 1965.
• Benson Burner, Columbia, 1966.
• The George Benson Cookbook, Columbia, 1966.
• Giblet Gravy, Verve, 1967.
• The Shape of Things to Come, A&M, 1968.
• The Other Side of Abbey Road, A&M, 1969.
• Beyond the Blue Horizon, CTI, 1971.
• White Rabbit, CTI, 1972.
• Bad Benson, CTI, 1974.
• Breezin', Warner Bros., 1976.
• In Flight, Warner Bros., 1977.
• Weekend in L.A., Warner Bros., 1978.
• Livin' Inside Your Love, Warner Bros., 1979.
• Give Me the Night, Warner Bros., 1980.
• In Your Eyes, Warner Bros., 1983.
• 20-20, Warner Bros., 1984.
• Twice the Love, Warner Bros., 1988.
• Tenderly, Warner Bros., 1989.
• Big Boss Band (with the Count Basie Orchestra), Warner Bros., 1990.
• Love Remembers, Warner Bros., 1993.
• That's Right, GRP, 1996.
• Standing Together, GRP, 1998.

Further Reading

Books

• Contemporary Musicians, volume 9, Gale, 1993.
• Erlewine, Michael, et. al, The All Music Guide to Jazz, Miller Freeman, 1998.
• Kernfeld, Barry, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, St. Martin's, 1995.
• Romanowski, Patricia, and Holly George-Warren, The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll, Fireside, 1995.

Periodicals

• Down Beat, October 1991.
• Guitar Player, June 1999, p. 135.
• Jet, September 7, 1998, p. 55.

— James M. Manheim

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For The Record...

Born March 22, 1943, in Pittsburgh, PA; wife’s name, Johnnie; children: Keith Givens (deceased), Robert, Marcus, Christopher, Stephen, George, Jr. Guitarist, singer, composer. Played electric guitar in Brother Jack McDuff’s quartet, 1962-65; worked as sideman and led own quartets as guitarist and singer, beginning in 1965; recording artist with Columbia Records, 1965-68; worked with producer Creed Taylor, first at A&M Records, then at Taylor’s CTI label, 1968-72; recording artist with Warner Bros. Records, beginning in 1976. Awards: Numerous Grammy awards, including record of the year, 1977, best instrumental performance, 1977, best R&B male vocal performance, 1980, best jazz vocal performance, 1980, and best pop instrumental, 1983; multiplatinum award for Breezin’; several other platinum and gold records; honorary degrees in music. Addresses: Record company—Warner Bros., 3300 Warner Blvd., Burbank, CA 91505-4694.

Guitarist, singer, composer

George Benson straddles the pop and jazz worlds, managing to garner fans in both. Although he is well known for his warm singing voice, which is featured on many commercially successful albums, he initially drew notice in the music industry as a young and innovative jazz guitarist. After many years of recording and performing primarily pop music, he resumed playing traditional jazz in the late 1980s.

Benson’s singing career apparently began soon after he could talk: in 1947, when he was just four years old, he won a singing contest and performed on the radio as "Little Georgie Benson." Benson sang in nightclubs and on the street, where at age ten he was heard by a talent scout. This discovery led to his first recording, the R&B song "She Makes Me Mad," on the RCA label. Benson cites jazz great Eddie Jefferson as an early influence on his singing. He told Down Beat reporter Lois Gilbert, "I felt he was one of the greatest jazz singers the world had known—he was to me the Bebop King." Listening to recordings of groundbreaking saxophonist Charlie Parker and guitarist Grant Green increased his interest in jazz, and at seventeen, he led a five piece R&B group, in which he played rhythm guitar and sang.

Benson’s big break came in 1961 when he joined Jack McDuff’s organ trio as an electric guitarist. He toured and recorded with McDuff until 1965, when he left to lead his own quartets. In addition to singing and playing electric guitar with his own group, he played as a sideman for such jazz masters as Ron Carter, Billy Cobham, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, and Lee Morgan. Benson’s first album as a leader, Benson Burner, was released in 1967. Although his singing was considered unremarkable, his brilliantly searing guitar solos were hailed as the work of a promising new jazz guitarist.

From Jazz to Pop
Benson’s guitar style—especially his octave playing and soft tone—reflects the influence of Wes Montgomery, the legendary guitarist who set the pattern for the younger musician’s career. Both worked under producer Creed Taylor, who first steered Montgomery from jazz playing to pop success, and then did the same for Benson. Benson initially worked with Taylor at A&M Records, joining Taylor’s newly established CTI label in 1970. Although Benson still played guitar, Taylor worked to showcase his singing, backing his vocals with orchestras. Benson continued to record some highly praised jazz, particularly on his 1971 album Beyond the Blue Horizon.

Benson disliked his lack of autonomy under Taylor, so he moved to Warner Bros. and producer Tommy LiPuma. Benson and his group recorded with LiPuma, who overdubbed the strings section to sweeten their sound. At this time Benson developed his style of scat singing the identical line he was playing on the guitar. His 1976 Warner Bros. album Breezin’, which includes the hit "This Masquerade," sold four million copies and broke the instrumental sales record for that year.

Benson started the 1980s by attempting to break into the dance market with Give Me the Night. Produced by Quincy Jones, who also produced Michael Jackson’s phenomenally popular dance album Off the Wall, Benson’s album achieved moderate success. Benson told Gilbert that he was striving to appeal to a variety of listeners: "I don’t ever want to be pigeon-holed, and I don’t want to make records that just sit on a shelf," he said in Down Beat. "I want them to be spinning on somebody’s turntable."

Return to Jazz
Benson’s commercial success in the 1970s and early 1980s was coupled with criticism for his virtual abandonment of traditional jazz. Jazz purists were disappointed that Benson’s early promise as a jazz guitarist had not been fulfilled. Although Benson had dabbled in playing jazz guitar—as in his performance with Benny Goodman on public television’s Soundstage Tribute to John Hammond— he did not dedicate an entire album to his jazz playing until 1989, when he collaborated with jazz masters McCoy Tyner, Lenny Castro, and Ron Carter on the hit Tenderly. Benson also toured with the McCoy Tyner Trio throughout the summer of 1989. Commenting in Down Beat on his decision to shift back to jazz guitar, Benson noted, "With Tenderly, I very much felt I was reestablishing my jazz credentials and, although it took audiences a little while to get used to it, the response was eventually overwhelming."

Benson took this favorable response to his jazz playing as encouragement to pursue a jazz recording with the Count Basie Orchestra (CBO). Their collaboration, the 1990 album Big Boss Band, was well received. Benson joined the CBO for several songs at the NorthSea Jazz Festival that same year, standing in for Ella Fitzgerald at the last minute. Benson reported to Down Beat writer Michael Bourne, "We had no rehearsal except for what we’d done in the studio, but the great vibe was still there."

Scatting Benson-Style
Benson’s trademark—scat singing a line identical to the melody he plays on the guitar—has earned him the admiration of fans and music critics alike. Although he generally sings in unison with the guitar, he occasionally sings an octave higher or lower than he plays. Even more rarely, he sings in harmony with his guitar. He told Down Beat’s Michael Bourne, "My guitar can do things my voice can’t do. It can soar and makes my voice try to follow, and I end up singing in octaves my voice can’t do when I’m just doing the vocal. When I’m doing it with the guitar, my voice doesn’t stop. It follows the guitar all the way up the scale and down. I don’t know how I’m able to get that much range, but I can."

Benson’s attempts to juggle the roles of guitarist and vocalist, jazz innovator and pop success, have occasionally led to criticism of his lack of dedication to pure jazz. However, his efforts in the late 1980s to fulfill his early promise as a jazz performer have resulted in the expansion of his pop audience with jazz enthusiasts. Throughout the early 1990s that expansion gave signs of continuing as Benson worked on an album with Jon Hendricks, Al Jarreau, and Bobby McFerrin and considered a world tour with the Count Basie Orchestra.

Selected discography
Benson Burner, Columbia, 1967.
Giblet Gravy, Verve, 1968.
Shape of Things, A&M, 1968.
(With Miles Davis) Miles in the Sky, Columbia, 1968.
Beyond the Blue Horizon, CTI, 1971, reissued, 1987.
White Rabbit, CTI, 1971.
The Electrifying George Benson, Affinity, 1973.
Breezin’, Warner Bros., 1976.
Weekend in L.A. Warner Bros., 1977.
Give Me the Night, Warner Bros., 1980.
While the City Sleeps, Warner Bros., 1986.
Twice the Love, Warner Bros., 1988.
Bad Benson (recorded in 1974), CTI, 1988.
George Benson in Concert at Carnegie Hall (recorded in 1975), CTI, 1988.
(With McCoy Tyner, Ron Carter, and Lenny Castro) Tenderly, Warner Bros., 1989.
Big Boss Band Featuring the Count Basie Orchestra, Warner Bros., 1990.
(With Jack McDuff) George Benson and Jack McDuff, Prestige. The Other Side of Abbey Road, A&M.
20/20, Warner Bros.
Livin’ Inside Your Love, Warner Bros.

Sources
Books
Feather, Leonard, and Ira Gitler, The Encyclopedia of Jazz in the Seventies, Horizon, 1976.
Lyons, Len, and Don Perlo, Jazz Portraits: The Lives and Music of the Jazz Masters, William Morrow, 1989.
The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, volume 1, edited by Barry Kernfeld, Macmillan, 1988.

Periodicals
Audio, February 1987; December 1989.
Chicago Tribune, August 3, 1992.
Down Beat, November 1980; November 1987; March 1988; July 1988; November 1988; November 1989; December 1990; January 1991; October 1991.
Guitar Player, October 1987; January 1992.
High Fidelity, September 1988.
Los Angeles Magazine, January 1990.
New York Times, October 10, 1991.
People, October 24, 1988.
Rolling Stone, October 5, 1989.
Stereo Review, September 1988; November 1989; March 1991.
Variety, July 4, 1990.
World Monitor, November 1991.
Additional information for this profile was obtained from Warner Bros. Records press material, 1991.

• Genres: Jazz

Biography

George Benson is simply one of the greatest guitarists in jazz history, but he is also an amazingly versatile musician, and that frustrates to no end critics who would paint him into a narrow bop box. He can play in just about any style -- from swing to bop to R&B to pop -- with supreme taste, a beautiful rounded tone, terrific speed, a marvelous sense of logic in building solos, and, always, an unquenchable urge to swing. His inspirations may have been Charlie Christian and Wes Montgomery -- and he can do dead-on impressions of both -- but his style is completely his own. Not only can he play lead brilliantly, he is also one of the best rhythm guitarists around, supportive to soloists and a dangerous swinger, particularly in a soul-jazz format. Yet Benson can also sing in a lush, soulful tenor with mannerisms similar to those of Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway, and it is his voice that has proved to be more marketable to the public than his guitar. Benson is the guitar-playing equivalent of Nat King Cole -- a fantastic pianist whose smooth way with a pop vocal eventually eclipsed his instrumental prowess in the marketplace -- but unlike Cole, Benson has been granted enough time after his fling with the pop charts to reaffirm his jazz guitar credentials, which he still does at his concerts.

Benson actually started out professionally as a singer, performing in nightclubs at eight, recording four sides for RCA's X label in 1954, forming a rock band at 17 while using a guitar that his stepfather made for him. Exposure to records by Christian, Montgomery, and Charlie Parker got him interested in jazz, and by 1962, the teenaged Benson was playing in Brother Jack McDuff's band. After forming his own group in 1965, Benson became another of talent scout John Hammond's major discoveries, recording two highly regarded albums of soul-jazz and hard bop for Columbia and turning up on several records by others, including Miles Davis' Miles in the Sky. He switched to Verve in 1967, and, shortly after the death of Montgomery in June 1968, producer Creed Taylor began recording Benson with larger ensembles on A&M (1968-1969) and big groups and all-star combos on CTI (1971-1976).

While the A&M and CTI albums certainly earned their keep and made Benson a guitar star in the jazz world, the mass market didn't catch on until he began to emphasize vocals after signing with Warner Bros. in 1976. His first album for Warner Bros., Breezin', became a Top Ten hit on the strength of its sole vocal track, "This Masquerade," and this led to a string of hit albums in an R&B-flavored pop mode, culminating with the Quincy Jones-produced Give Me the Night. As the '80s wore on, though, Benson's albums became riddled with commercial formulas and inferior material, with his guitar almost entirely relegated to the background. Perhaps aware of the futility of chasing the charts (after all, "This Masquerade" was a lucky accident), Benson reversed his field late in the '80s to record a fine album of standards, Tenderly, and another with the Basie band, his guitar now featured more prominently. His pop-flavored work also improved noticeably in the '90s. Benson retains the ability to spring surprises on his fans and critics, like his dazzlingly idiomatic TV appearance and subsequent record date with Benny Goodman in 1975 in honor of John Hammond, and his awesome command of the moment at several Playboy Jazz Festivals in the '80s. His latter-day recordings include the 1998 effort Standing Together, 2000's Absolute Benson, 2001's All Blues, and 2004's Irreplaceable. Three songs from 2006's Givin' It Up, recorded with Al Jarreau, were nominated for Grammy Awards in separate categories.

Benson began to see numerous reissues of his catalog material from his years with producer Creed Taylor on Verve, A&M, and CTI, from 2008 on. In 2009, he signed to Concord and released Songs and Stories for the label, and followed it up with his first primarily instrumental album in 35 years entitled Guitar Man in 2011. ~ Richard S. Ginell, Rovi

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