George Benson
b. 22 March 1943, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.This guitarist and singer successfully planted his feet in both the modern jazz and easy-listening pop camps in the mid-'70s when jazz-pop as well as jazz-rock became a most lucrative proposition. Before a move to New York in 1963, he had played in various R&B outfits local to Pittsburgh, and recorded a single, It Should Have Been Me, in 1954. By 1965, Benson was an established jazz guitarist, having worked with Brother Jack McDuff, Herbie Hancock—and, crucially, Wes Montgomery, whose repertoire was drawn largely from pop, light classical and other non-jazz sources. When Montgomery died in 1969, critics predicted that Benson—contracted to Columbia in 1966—would be his stylistic successor. Further testament to Benson's prestige was the presence of Hancock, Earl Klugh, Miles Davis, Joe Farrell and other jazz musicians on his early albums. Four of these were produced by Montgomery's Creed Taylor who signed Benson to his own CTI label in 1971. Benson was impressing audiences in concert with extrapolations of such as California Dreamin', Come Together and, digging deeper into mainstream pop, Cry Me A River and Unchained Melody. From BEYOND THE BLUE HORIZON, an arrangement of Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit was a turntable hit, and chart success seemed inevitable—especially as he was now recording a majority of vocal items. After BAD BENSON reached the USA album lists and, via disco floors, the title song of SUPERSHIP cracked European charts, he was well-placed to negotiate a favourable deal with Warner Brothers who reaped an immediate Grammy-winning harvest with 1976's BREEZIN’ (and its memorable This Masquerade). Then companies with rights to the prolific Benson's earlier product cashed in, with reissues such as THE OTHER SIDE OF ABBEY ROAD, a track-for-track interpretation of an entire Beatles' album. Profit from film themes like The Greatest Love Of All (from the Muhammed Ali bio-pic The Greatest), million-selling GIVE ME THE NIGHT and the television-advertised THE LOVE SONGS have allowed him to indulge artistic whims such as a nod to jazz roots via 1987's excellent COLLABORATION with Earl Klugh, and a more commercial merger with Aretha Franklin on Love All The Hurt Away. Moreover, a fondness for pop standards has proved marketable too; epitomized by revivals of On Broadway—a US Top 10 single from 1978's WEEKEND IN L.A.—and Bobby Darin's Beyond The Sea (La Mer). Like Darin, Benson also found success with Nat King Cole's Nature Boy (a single from IN FLIGHT)—and a lesser hit with Cole's Tenderly in 1989, another balance of sophistication, hard-bought professionalism and intelligent response to chart climate. 1990 brought a full-length collaboration with the Count Basie Orchestra, accompanied by a sell-out UK tour.