Benson followed it up with The George Benson Cookbook, also with Lonnie Smith and Ronnie Cuber on baritone and drummer Marion Booker. Benson's next recording was It's Uptown with the George Benson Quartet, including Lonnie Smith on organ and Ronnie Cuber on baritone saxophone. At the age of 21, he recorded his first album as leader, The New Boss Guitar, featuring McDuff. One of his many early guitar heroes was country-jazz guitarist Hank Garland.
WHO PRODUCED BREEZIN GEORGE BENSON HOW TO
As a youth he learned how to play straight-ahead instrumental jazz during a relationship performing for several years with organist Jack McDuff. Luckily, after he spent time in a juvenile detention centre his stepfather made him a new guitar.īenson attended and graduated from Schenley High School. When this was discovered (tied with the failure of his single) his guitar was impounded. As he has stated in an interview, Benson's introduction to showbusiness had an effect on his schooling. The single was produced by Leroy Kirkland for RCA's rhythm and blues label, Groove Records. Out of the four sides he cut, two were released: "She Makes Me Mad" backed with "It Should Have Been Me", with RCA Victor in New York although one source indicates this record was released under the name "Little Georgie", the 45rpm label is printed with the name George Benson. At the age of nine, he started to record. At the age of eight, he played guitar in an unlicensed nightclub on Friday and Saturday nights, but the police soon closed the club down. At the age of seven, he first played the ukulele in a corner drug store, for which he was paid a few dollars.
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Occasionally, Benson sang with his quartet, but the vast majority of its work was instrumental - and it was during the group's brief existence that he wrote such bop instrumentals as "Clockwise," "The Cooker," "Benson's Rider," "The Borgia Stick," and "Myna Bird Blues." Much to the dismay of bop lovers, the George Benson Quartet never celebrated a second anniversary the group called it quits in 1966.Benson was born and raised in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. During its short existence, the George Benson Quartet recorded two excellent John Hammond-produced albums for Columbia: It's Uptown in 1965 and The George Benson Cookbook in 1966. The formation of the quartet came not long after Benson had left the employ of organist Jack McDuff by 1965, the guitarist was ready to be a full-time leader, and Benson was exactly that when he formed a hard bop/soul-jazz quartet that employed Ronnie Cuber on baritone saxophone, the Jimmy Smith-influenced Lonnie Smith on organ, and various people on drums (including Jimmy Lovelace, Ray Lucas, and Marion Booker). Although the group was short-lived, many jazz purists insist that it was Benson's greatest achievement.
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In the early to mid-'60s, Benson was the epitome of straight-ahead jazz - and jazz purists loved the bop-oriented direction of the George Benson Quartet, a hard-swinging combo that he formed in 1965 (11 years before he enjoyed a major pop breakthrough with 1976's multi-platinum Breezin'). But early in his career - when Benson was still in his twenties - the jazz world thought of him as a guitar-playing hard bop/soul-jazz instrumentalist whose primary influences were Wes Montgomery and Charlie Christian. These days, George Benson (born March 22, 1943, Pittsburgh, PA) is often described as a commercial R&B/pop singer who sometimes moonlights as a pop-jazz guitarist.