George Benson
Early Beginning’s
George Benson was born on March 22, 1943, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was raised in Pittsburgh’s Hill District and attended the now defunct Connelly High School before dropping out. Benson showed his 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 out professionally as a singer, performing in nightclubs at the age of eight and learned to dance and play the ukulele at this time. After recording four sides for RCA Victor’s X Records subsidiary in the mid-1950s, his stepfather wanted him to concentrate on developing his instrumental talent and constructed a guitar for him. By his late teens, Benson began to concentrate exclusively on the guitar and formed his own rock band at 17. His interest in jazz came from exposure to records of artists such as guitarists Charlie Christian, Grant Green and Wes Montgomery, and saxophonist Charlie Parker.
Career
Benson began his career working as a guitarist and singer, performing with a succession of rhythm-and-blues and rock bands in the corner pubs of his native Pittsburgh. In the early 1960s, Benson apprenticed with organist “Brother” Jack McDuff, and by the age of 21, recorded his first album as leader. He recorded his debut album in 1964, The New Boss Guitar, with McDuff on organ. After playing and recording with McDuff for four years, Benson set out on his own and moved to New York City, which was then the jazz capital of the world. It was during this early period of his career that Benson would meet his wife of over 40 years, Johnnie, whom he married in 1965. They would have seven children together, all of them sons. While in New York, Benson formed his own band and met two acquaintances that would become major influences in his path to stardom: guitarist Wes Montgomery and Columbia Records producer and executive John Hammond.
It was Montgomery, one of jazz’s most creative guitar players, who came across Benson early, complimenting and encouraging the young guitarist to continue his already impressive work. Montgomery would prove to be Benson’s most important inspiration in the style of playing that he would develop. Hammond was a talent scout who made Benson one of his major discoveries in 1965. He was impressed with Benson’s growing list of sideman credits, which included work with such artists as Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard and Miles Davis. In 1965, Hammond signed Benson to Columbia, for which he would record three albums. His first album, It’s Uptown, featured Lonnie Smith on organ and Ronnie Cuber on baritone sax. This album, along with his second album, Benson Burner, were produced by Hammond and were in the main bop-influenced vein of the jazz of the time. This garnered the young guitarist plenty of positive attention in the jazz community. Benson then followed up his first two albums with The George Benson Cookbook in 1966, also featuring Lonnie Smith and Ronnie Cuber.
While working on albums with Hammond, Benson also found time to do side projects, one of which was working with Miles Davis in the mid-1960s. Davis employed Benson for his services for his 1967 Columbia release, Miles in the Sky, with Benson playing guitar on the song “Paraphernalia.” However, Benson was searching for wider public recognition, switching labels several times. He landed first with Verve in 1967, recording three albums, and then with A&M in 1968, which included a version of The Beatles’ 1969 album Abbey Road called The Other Side of Abbey Road, released in 1969. Benson was influenced by jazz producer Creed Taylor, who had worked with Montgomery, one of Benson’s mentors. Shortly after the death of Montgomery in June 1968, Taylor began recording Benson with various large ensembles on A&M from 1968-1969 and big groups and all-star combos on the CTI label from 1971-1976. The A&M and CTI albums made Benson a guitar star in the jazz world, but the vocal tracks he cut on the albums reawakened his interest in singing, and this emphasis on vocals would prove to be a vital part of his later successes.
In late 1975, Benson signed with Warner Brothers, yet another label change that would pave the way for his breakthrough into the mass market. Despite his early success, Benson desired to combine his singing and guitar playing. Music producer Tommy LiPuma was able to combine his talents, resulting in Breezin’, the first jazz record to attain platinum sales. This 1976 blockbuster was the first in a long list of albums Benson would record with Warner Brothers. The album included a pop-oriented vocal track, the Leon Russell composition “This Masquerade,” which featured the guitarist scatting along with his guitar solo break. The song reached the number one position on the Jazz and R&B charts, winning a Grammy Award for Record of the Year, and pushed the album to the same position on the pop charts. The album won three Grammy Awards and became the best-selling jazz album of all time.
Breezin’ brought the instrumental title track to jazz radio and was also the introduction of Benson’s trademark: scat singing along with his guitar, doubling it at the interval of an octave. The scat singing provided Benson a special relationship between him and his guitar. “When I pick up the guitar, it’s an extension of what I am,” Benson told Guitar Player magazine. At first, Benson’s singing drew criticism in the studio when he tried to experiment with his new guitar sound. “The first time I tried to sing along with my guitar, everybody in the studio booed,” said Benson. “They all said it wouldn’t work. When I got with Tommy LiPuma all that changed. He said ‘Sure, let’s go with some vocals, see where we get.’ And you know what happened after that.” From this point on, Benson would follow up the success of Breezin’ with a series of commercially successful albums that would mostly emphasize his singing.
Through the late-1970s, Benson continued to record albums for the Warner Brothers and CTI labels. His recordings were becoming more pop-oriented, with more of an emphasis on his singing rather than his guitar playing. Benson began to receive criticism from jazz purists who felt that he had abandoned his early artistry for pop success. “I guess that’s the biggest crime I’ve made as far as jazz lovers go,” offered Benson. “They don’t always like to see you play for the general public. I’ve always tried to let my experience show itself. You learn, you change. The door opened and I walked through it.” Despite this criticism, Benson enjoyed tremendous commercial success, particularly with his 1978 album, Weekend in L.A., which featured the Grammy Award-winning live take of “On Broadway.” The hit album reached number one on the Jazz and R&B charts and reached number five on the U.S. pop chart.
Benson came back in 1980 with another hit album, Give Me the Night, featuring the hit title track, which peaked at number four on the U.S. pop chart. The Quincy Jones-produced album was a culmination of a string of hit albums in an R&B-flavored pop mode. By this time, Benson’s guitar had been relegated to the background, putting his vocals and more commercial formulas at the forefront. This was even more evident in Benson’s hit single “Turn Your Love Around,” which hit number one on the R&B chart and nearly topped the U.S. pop chart, peaking at number five in 1981. Benson continued to record through the 1980s with only minor pop hits, which included “Lady Love Me (One More Time)” in 1983 and “20/20” in 1984. With his guitar work increasingly becoming non-existent in his recordings, Benson continued to receive criticism for the commercialization of his work. Richard S. Ginell of the All-Music Guide to Jazz wrote about Benson’s 1983 album In Your Eyes and observed that, “for jazz fans, Benson’s albums at this point become a search for buried treasure, for his guitar time is extremely limited.”
The jazz guitar work that made him famous returned in 1989, as Benson reversed his field from pop to jazz with a fine album of standards, Tenderly, with the legendary jazz pianist McCoy Tyner. After going on tour with Tyner’s trio that year, Benson recorded another album of jazz standards, Big Boss Band, with Count Basie’s Orchestra in 1990. His guitar was now again featured more prominently in the 1990s, along with a noticeable improvement in his pop-flavored work. Benson’s return to jazz was a showcase for his versatility as a musician, with his ability to play with a wide variety of arrangements: from small ensembles to big bands, with a string section, with hard bop, and with Latin-inflected selections. The success he achieved in the worlds of jazz and pop helped him manage a balance between the two genres, as he appeared in a variety of concert venues and solidified his popularity through the 1990s.
In 1992, Benson once again played with Jack McDuff, appearing on his album Color Me Blue. He then left Warner Brothers after recording his 1993 album Love Remembers and signed with the jazz-oriented GRP label in 1996, releasing the album That’s Right. That same year, Benson was honored at the 10th anniversary of the Mellon Jazz Festival in Pittsburgh, which also included such jazz greats as saxophonist Joe Lovano, Dizzy Gillespie/Charlie Parker sideman Jimmy Heath, and avant-garde composer John Zorn. In 1998, Benson returned to the studio to record the smooth jazz album Standing Together. His later notable recordings include 2000’s Absolute Benson, 2001’s All Blues, and 2004’s Irreplaceable.
In 2006, Benson teamed up with jazz vocalist and friend Al Jarreau to record Givin’ It Up, which was released in October on Concord Records. Benson and Jarreau were hardly strangers, having both recorded on the Warner Brothers label in the mid-’70s and performing together at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. This new pairing came about after Benson had already signed with Concord, at which time Jarreau had begun talks with record executives. “I was talking to Concord, looking at them with big eyes, when one of the execs called me and George into his office and asked, ‘What do you think about doing a record together?'” remembered Jarreau. “We looked at each other and said, ‘Let’s go!'” The multiple-Grammy winners went on tour in America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand to promote the album before its release. This new collaboration represents “a lot of what George and I typically do – pop and R&B,” within a jazz context, said Jarreau. The record was received well by critics and was nominated for three Grammy Awards, winning two. On June 19, 2007, the Hill District native came home once again, as Benson performed with Jarreau for the Mellon Jazz show at Pittsburgh’s Heinz Hall.
Amid all his success, Benson’s life has been hit by personal tragedy. He and his wife have lost three of their seven sons, one to kidney failure, one to crib death, and one to gunshot injuries stemming from a bar fight. In 1998, he was asked by Mohammed Al Fayed to write a song in commemoration of his son, Dodi, who died along with his friend Princess Diana of England in a 1997 automobile crash in Paris. Benson shared the song with his wife and talked about the emotional effect it had on him. “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.” Through it all, Benson has managed to keep moving on and credits his faith and success to his conversion to the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The Pittsburgh native is among the 2009 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters and was honored at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York on October 17, 2008. Benson continues to keep busy, recording new songs and touring the world, performing over 100 shows a year. He is currently living a private life in Arizona and is back in the studio recording a new album with a stellar cast of musicians, which includes keyboardist/vocalist David Paich and guitarist/vocalist Steve Lukather of the rock/pop band Toto.
He is perhaps one of the greatest jazz guitarists of all time. After beginning his recording career at an early age, Benson played with several renowned jazz artists during the 1960s, including Jack McDuff and Miles Davis. His breakthrough success came in the 1970s with his 1976 release Breezin’, which included the title track and “This Masquerade.” Other hit albums followed, including Give Me the Night in 1980, and a hit single, “Turn Your Love Around” in 1981. He has recorded several gold and platinum albums and has won numerous awards, including eight Grammy’s. Benson has been one of the busiest entertainers in the business, continuing to record and perform throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Known mostly as a jazz guitarist, Benson is also a pop, R&B, and scat singer, and songwriter.
Selected Works:
Albums
- The New Boss Guitar. Prestige, 1964.
- It’s Uptown. Columbia, 1965.
- Breezin’. Warner Brothers, 1976.
- Weekend in L.A. Warner Brothers, 1978.
- Give Me the Night. Warner Brothers, 1980.
- The George Benson Collection. Warner Brothers, 1981.
- Givin’ It Up. (with Al Jarreau) Concord, 2006.
Singles
- “This Masquerade.” Warner Brothers, 1976.
- “Breezin’.” Warner Brothers, 1976.
- “On Broadway.” Warner Brothers, 1978.
- “Give Me The Night.” Warner Brothers, 1980.
- “Turn Your Love Around.” Warner Brothers, 1981.