"Because that's what the people came to hear." "But I swore if I ever had a hit, I would play it for the people no matter what the critics said," Benson reflects. Many jazz snobs scoffed at Benson's newfound commercial success, as if it somehow corrupted the genre's purity. "The people in the audience were into it, and we had a great party record that couldn't fail." "It was the only record I've ever cut that I knew in my heart and soul was definitely going to be a hit," he explains. Guests kept asking him to play it over and over again. Those records reached a much wider audience of pop and R&B listeners.īut perhaps his signature tune is a live rendition of the Drifters classic "On Broadway." Recorded live in front of an enthusiastic audience and running at more than 10 minutes, Benson nonetheless knew it was a hit - especially when he received a cassette of it later that same night and he played it on a boom box around the pool of his motel. And he'd make me play!"Īfter many years of appearing on other people's albums and having modest success as a solo artist, Benson hit a his commercial peak in the late '70s/early '80s with instrumental and vocal hits including "Breezin'," "This Masquerade" (the 1977 Grammy winner for Record of the Year) and "Give Me the Night." "He let me come into his space and allowed me to hang out with him and play with him onstage. "I was 17 when I met him, and it was his disposition that impressed me the most," Benson remembers. But none made more of an impact than Wes Montgomery, widely considered the best jazz guitarist ever.
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In the book, Benson gives generous accolades to a series of musical mentors, including Brother Jack McDuff, Thelonious Monk, Benny Goodman and Frank Sinatra. By the time he turned 10, he already had recorded an album and was making as much for playing one hour in a nightclub - $40 - as his mother made for two weeks of work. Everyone was crying!"īenson tells this story - and many more from a 50-plus years and counting career - in "Benson: The Autobiography," written with Alan Goldsher.Ī child prodigy, "Little Georgie Benson" made good coin playing guitar and ukulele on the streets of Pittsburgh. "They took care of me the whole trip! I'm glad nothing happened, and we lived up to what people expected. "And those two guys treated me so kindly," Benson says in a phone interview. So Benson packed up his family and went to Sun City, a resort in South Africa.ĭa Capo Press, 320 pp., $25.99. But contracts had been signed, thousands of tickets had been sold, and a 60-piece backing orchestra began rehearsing. Having no clue about the country's racist apartheid policies, Benson had friends, his band and even record company urging him to cancel. After all, wasn't South Africa just a generic name for the southern part of the continent? So in the early '80s, when an international promoter approached the singer/guitarist about playing a lucrative series of shows, he readily agreed. George Benson is a jazz musician, not a politician. guitarist and singer George Benson performs on Stravinsky stage during the 37th Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland, Sunday, July 6, 2003. MARTIAL TREZZINI/SUB Show More Show Less 4 of4 U.S. 1 of4 Show More Show Less 2 of4 Show More Show Less 3 of4 U.S.
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